655 Pierre Étaix

[Mr Sausage]

But we never laugh at Etaix's probelms in a condescending way. His mistakes are well-meant, not the result of some risible or contemptible character fault. This is because most of his follies are the result of blindly doing what he sees other people doing. It's usually funny because he's not being himself (or because he's in a situation where he has to pretend he's not himself) rather than because he is. Or the movie exaggerates something we've all felt at some point (eg. becoming obsessed with a celebrity), so it's an invitation to laugh at ourselves as much as at Etaix.

[Sloper]

Having now watched the whole set, I wonder how the earlier films might look when re-watched in the light of Land of Milk and Honey, which seems to me a genuinely misanthropic film, brilliantly put together and at times hilariously scathing, but lacking the light touch and affection for its subject that would have made it a really good film. It's tragic that the disastrous reception of Milk and Honey helped to put an end to Étaix's film career, but at the same time you can see why people responded badly to the mean-spirited tone. There's an impatience with human foibles there that makes it a hard film to stomach.

Does this misanthropy offer a clue to understanding some common threads in the rest of Étaix's work? It often seems as though the protagonists in these films are struggling to find contentment in a world of pervasive stupidity and mediocrity. They try to escape into various fantasies (love, marriage, an affair, marriage again, camping, relentless smiling, etc) that promise happiness, and these almost always turn out to be hollow and unsatisfying; only in Yoyo, in the form of the circus, do we see a place (or a concept, or community) that lives up to its promise and serves as a valid means of escape, and even here that ideal realm ends up looking like an intangible fantasy.

The last few posts here seem to indicate that a lot depends on whether you can empathise with the central character in these films. Personally I find the portrayal very empathetic, and this may be because I'm kind of a miserable, jaded git myself. I think that in both The Suitor and Le grand amour - which for me is definitely Étaix's masterpiece - the disillusionment the hero goes through is clearly not just a reaction to the crass and ugly world around him, but also a rueful process of self-discovery.

The purest expression of this is in Le grand amour, during the excruciating date scene (which I won't spoil for those who haven't seen it), but the idea is present throughout much of The Suitor as well.

Pierre's laughter following his first-hand encounter with Stella is as much at himself as at the rest of Stella's fans, and when he then burns all of his Stella-related memorabilia in the garden this seems motivated more by shame at his own naivety than by disgust at what his idol has turned out to be. He ends up running after Ilke, the woman he wanted in the first place, but the look of tragic resignation on his face when he finds himself drifting away from her is priceless: of course some external force is thwarting him once again, and of course he's too stupid to figure out that he could just get off - and at the risk of over-analysing a joke, I do think it's significant that the final shot is held long enough for us to see that the baggage-carrier is going to bring him back to Ilke again, but not long enough for us to actually see them re-united. I agree that the tone isn't condescending or contemptuous, but the accent does seem to be on the inevitable disappointment of human existence, not on the essential benevolence of human beings or the possibility of redemption and happiness (which, again, I think Tati tended to emphasise).

Perhaps Land of Milk and Honey is so sour because there is no hero: the film simply observes and edits together a heap of seriously disappointing sights and sounds, but without anchoring this satirical portrait in a sympathetic protagonist who participates in the mediocrity around him…until, that is, the last couple of minutes, when Étaix focuses the film on himself by offering up his interviewees' verdicts on the work of 'Pierre Étaix'. This wonderfully self-mocking passage, along with the shots of the films' various subjects waving at the camera, almost provides the human touch that has been lacking until then.

So in short, I think there is a kind of cynicism and even misanthropy in Étaix's work at times, but his own presence in these films - as the inept protagonist - helps to offset this, because it shows that his stance is not that of the mocking, supercilious observer, but that of someone who is only too aware that he is just as disappointing as everyone and everything else. To me, that's what makes the hero easy to relate to, but I imagine those with a sunnier disposition might incline more towards a Hulot-type.

[movielocke]

Yoyo was out and out superb. Initially I was not engaged, with the long opening segment of extremely mild humor poking fun at obscene privilege, then the film picks up with the arrival of the circus, and from that point on the whole thing is pretty much perfect, down to even redeeming the opening segment with an elliptical return at the end. The film was funny and smart and almost always visually interesting, including some great camerawork gags (such as the Mickey's Trailer esque routine with the cigarette). it's droll and wry observational humor, not the sort to make you laugh out loud very often, though Etaix got me at times. The approach and the humor seems much less 'mean' than The Suitor, though the detached cynicism directed at society is definitely still present, it is more muted here.

[movielocke]

As Long as You've Got Your Health was pretty good, it somewhat splits the difference between YoYo and The Suitor. It's got the same cruel observational disdain for humanity seen in the Suitor but modulated somewhat by a little more affection for the subjects who suffer through Pierre's brand of live action Tom and Jerry.

Strictly four short films presented one after another, there's no attempt at making a feature narrative, these are simply silent (or approximately silent) shorts with their own self contained themes. Insomnia is a nice comedic riff on Vampire tales, and stylistically has fun with the visual tropes of the earliest horror films. Cinematheque unpleasantly riffs on the experience of watching: movies communally, and television at home, and then skewers commercials rather amusingly. The titular short, As Long as You've Got Your Health, is a pretty vicious attack on city living, which is counterpointed nicely by the Rural misery of Into the Woods no more. Most of the gags are pretty funny, with Insomnia and As Long as You've Got Your Health the two standouts, Into the Woods is pretty great as it continues to build one gag on top of another via repetition, but that repetition also makes it feel as though it's a bit long. The deleted short Feeling Good, which was originally the first short in the set, is set in a tent camp prison of sorts, it's the most absurdist of the lot but has a rather cohesive story. The film opens feeling very much like a Buster Keaton short for the the first half, as Pierre tries and fails to make coffee over a campfire--as simple as that sounds, it is brilliantly mined and timed and developed and that sequence may be the best of any of these five shorts.

a bit of a let down after Yo Yo, but more amusing than The Suitor, all of these shorts are pretty comparable in entertainment value to the excellent Happy Anniversary, although Rupture is still probably the best short he put together.

[swo17]

I actually find the acrobatics of Étaix trying to find and keep a good seat in Cinematheque among the most impressive in the whole series of shorts, though the high point would have to be the jackhammering scene in the title short.

[movielocke]

Ah, that highlight--changing seats in the cinema--I forgot about because the skewering of TV ads sort of overwhelmed my memory of the short, it is indeed a fantastically timed and executed piece of classic gaggery.

It is nice to see Etaix return to a narrative in La Grand Amour, as well as attempt color for an entire feature. His use of color is adroit and natural, it becomes a thoughtful extension of his characters and environments. I wonder if his history in clowning--specifically, clowns exquisitely thought out use of color in makeup and costume--influenced his approach here. In any event, it was a relief that the color was tactile without ostentation and not the limpid hipster pallor one can expect in 95% of contemporary films to suffer the indignity of a digital intermediate.

--clearly I'm getting off track and letting recent irritants drift into these thoughts on Etaix--

In any event, La Grand Amour has tremendously inventive and often exquisitely well thought out visuals. So many sequences are just beautifully staged, framed, revealed, and timed together in a brilliant suturing of each piece. The narrative itself is relatively benign, skating on the edge of uncomfortable (but in that good, funny way uncomfortable can sometimes be) in its observations of the daily cognitive dissonances society vomits about. Then suddenly the ice skate starts to wobble a bit and we veer straight through uncomfortable and thoroughly into excruciating (as was said above). Etaix nearly had me curled up into a ball as I was cringing away from the screen so hard, it's as though he's not content to merely expose the social contradictions and let us experience some of the discomfort inherit therein, no he wants to make sure we the audience know we're complicit in the society and that we have to suffer, so he's going to rub our noses in it--as has been said, excruciating.

The film's over, and what had been an initially pleasant experience left me exhausted and irritated.

[movielocke]

Land of Milk and Honey almost seems like Etaix going backwards? I think that perception may simply be because I made something similar as a student. observational doc with a nonstop running commentary that I thought was pretty apt and hilarious. Unfortunately, the lesson to take from that was I could 'get' all the jokes because I'd seen it a hundred times, timed in each one to have the image match the voice and knew where they all were, for audiences that hadn't seen it a thousand times, they 'didn't get it' for the most part, even if they got some of the ironies, cynical bits, bitter sarcasm etc there was no way they were going to grasp the whole. So it seems, through my heavily biased lens, that Etaix did the same thing, bombarding us with a 72 minute continuous commentary track that is on-the-nose sledgehammer accompanied by the appropriate edits of funny matching images. But there's never a moment of breath in the film, it's one unending stream. That said, what he does is cohesive, it's well thought out, it's frequently funny and apt, and it probably rewards repeat viewings but it is unrelenting and almost dull because of the incessantness of it--and within today's cultural context of exploitative newscasting, american idol and reality tv there's really shocking to see or hear. I can definitely see why he was attacked from the left, right and middle, because all perspectives should be able to easily find something in here to be offended by.

I also find it comical that in the introduction he says "we had such an enormous volume of film, 20 hours! it was so difficult to wade through." Hah.

One thing that's just occured to me, if you've ever been to a comedy club and seen aspiring comics, you usually come across at least one comic that night who is failing miserably, panics a bit, and then starts really attacking the audience for being too dumb etc for not getting their jokes or how funny they are. I think the reception for this film, people thought Land of Milk and Honey was like that sort of stand up comedy failure, not really funny at all, and then veers sadly into attacking the audience. I think that's how the film was received, not especially deserved, but I can definitely see why it would provoke that response, given the content of the film.

[Drucker]

I was so excited for this set two years ago, that I finally got around to picking it up during the most recent sale.

My initial thoughts on The Suitor, which I skipped in our film club discussion, is that it's a great film, but not something that grabbed me. It grabbed me so little, in fact, that I realized while watching it on blu-ray, I'd seen it before (I think I DVRed it off TCM). While it has many great gags, and a few true laugh out loud moments, the whole thing still felt like he's updating Tati and Keaton for me. Even his unique use of sound, didn't seem so different than Tati's. I think subsequent viewings will have me falling further in love with this film, now that I've watched the whole box, but if this was all there was to Etaix, I'd be pretty shocked at the level of acclaim he gets.

Yo Yo, on the other hand, could easily find its way into being one of my favorite films of all time. Knives' post from a while back puts it pefectly.

I've only gotten through the first set, but Yo Yo is perhaps the funniest movie I've ever seen which makes the unexpected final shot all the more powerful. He never repeats a gag which is a stunning achievement given all the twist and turns of thought he goes through to execute each one. The film is basically a primer in how to make somebody laugh utilizing things specific to the cinema (like the smoke stack shot's use of three dimensional existence on a two dimensional plane).

The best part of Etaix is how he lets his imagination take over and just runs with it. Not only will he mention a gag, he'll illustrate it in a lovely, literal way. Yo Yo is an expertly told story, with perfect pacing that is not afraid to jump to its next theme / time period on a dime (the transition to the stock market crash, with bankers jumping to their death, was hysterical, and had me in stitches). Like Keaton, Etaix clearly loves the medium of film, and enjoys calling attention to it. Perhaps this is because, as someone with a background in live performance, he wanted his films to stand out and be different. This leads to a joy throughout his films, and Yo Yo is where this really starts to take off.

The first two parts of As Long as You've Got Your Health stood out for me better than the second two, but this is a concise way of using Etaix's bag of tricks. The merging of reality and fantasy is handled splendidly, and again, so few gags are repeated, and he's able to take something like finding a seat in a movie theater and milk every possibility from it. Here's also the beginning of an almost Monty Python-esque ridiculousness to his films, especially with the end of the movie theater short.

Le Grand Amour finally finds Etaix with a much more unified story, and his own stamp is all over it. Far from being traditional, the story always finds a new way to twist and turn. Etaix also has a great deal of dialogue in the film, and he's treated sympathetically and with disgust throughout. His character has always been an everyman, but there are also moments where he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt or tow be considered a good guy. After a superb opening sequence, Etaix infuses an ordinary marital tale with his frequent use of cutting-away from the story/having a fantasy devices, and tells a wonderful tale.

While I didn't care too much for Land Of Milk and Honey perhaps it'll grow on me later.

Etaix never repeats himself. Rather than do the same thing twice, which may please the audience more, he challenges himself. No two films are alike, and I can't believe how long it took me to get this set.

[Lemmy Caution]

This is certainly a terrific release from Criterion.
I watched The Suitor a few months ago after I first got hold of the set, and it didn't engage me. There were a few cute bits, but I wasn't engaged and middle part with the drunken party girl seemed to go on and on.

So just getting back to the set, I thought YoYo was fantastic. There are so many clever gags, and the storyline is interesting and the circus/performance aspect worked in well -- whereas it's sort of an odd interlude towards the end of The Suitor. Basically once it ended, I was tempted to watch it again.

Le Grand Amour has some funny gags and clever ideas, but I thought the story was too simple for such length and the characters not interesting. So I liked it but also felt distanced from it.

Good job to include the short films, including the feature made up of 4 shorts.
Pierre Etaix has an interesting style and sensibility. Keaton and Tati are clear reference points, but Etaix's looks, manner and fussiness also put me in mind of Pee Wee Herman and even Tony Randall at times. One thing I found is that his peculiar use of sound makes it very necessary to adjust your volume carefully so the effects work.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm bumping this thread because I've just 'discovered' Etaix and, while I'm always happy to find a new comic genius that wasn't on my radar, I have no idea why it took so long. He appears to be pretty unanimously liked here, but I don't recall hearing him referenced on the forum when discussing the great physical comics - not to mention outside of here. I'm only two films in (plus the three shorts), but The Suitor and YoYo are hilarious, clever, hospitable, grounded, and magical films. There may be less intricately imbricated gags than in one of Tati's worlds, but these effortlessly drift together with a greater sense of playfulness in the absence of ulterior motives in clear didacticism. That doesn't mean they don't serve as commentaries, because they do, but Etaix is much more vague in his intentions just as his films are more broadly socially relatable in themes of isolation within a social world, paying less attention to the Tati-esque barriers as much as emphasizing the state of seeking of connection with one foot out the door. The diverse choices of camera angles allow for the comedy to manifest more comfortably, meeting the audience without expecting or demanding the viewer to condition themselves to a particular objective lens, and sustain it. These films function most like Keaton's, and YoYo's audacity to basically pretend to be a Keaton-film, silence and all (for a little while... and following a quasi-adaption of one!) works better than any other imitator I can think of.

Etaix does his own thing though, and by wearing his influences on his sleeves, eclectically enough so as not to be unoriginal, he uses film history to his benefit. YoYo in particular is incredible because he embarks on a parade through history within the film as well, using ideas from real life and cinema together. Gags can tumble a mile a minute (that film's first act is unparalleled) but he also isn't afraid to slow everything down and meditate on an interaction, even between a man and an inanimate object, nature, or empty space, which is often the case. While the first film is a more consistent romp, the second procures considerable gear-shifting that takes us into several different kinds of films unexpectedly, harnessing new influences and transforming the tone, and intention, of the narrative to a more graceful and contemplative space for the rest of the action to resume. The recurring violin of a famous Dylan song, released the same year as the film, also tinted the milieu with a timelessness brewing in a film about movement through eras born out of the present, an accumulation of nostalgia.

The chronicle lands in a place of semi-autobiographical self-reflexivity that incorporates Etaix's passions in life and cinema together, but as an older, wiser man looking back with a bittersweet gulp. Shots such as a guy accidentally swallowing ice, or a woman walking through a crowd, are edited in a jarring, subjective fashion where we feel the sensations right with them instead of peering at the movements from a safe distance. I don't know how you turn a relentless laugh-riot into a touching drama, while maintaining enough of an ethereal attitude to channel the magic of cinematic emotion as a binding tissue, but Etaix does it. The finale is empowering individualism and validating isolation as a choice simultaneously, and yet it serves as a new beginning for the next chapter, or era, of a man's life that we can promise will be filled with new experience and history to be made. What a diverse, odd, perfect film!

Anyways, none of that really matters as much as the hope that someone will see this and realize it exists for the first time, like I did a few months ago when browsing the unknown titles in the collection and blind-buying it. It's worth the price for the first disc alone. Simply put, an underappreciated treasure.

[therewillbeblus]

Of course, after forcing a distinction between Etaix and Tati, I watch As Long as You’ve Got Your Health which is like a loose anthology of four shorts- several of which most resemble Tati's style. The middle two chapters especially feel right out of his films- except willing to get in closer proximity to the actions examined. There is still an intimacy to these sections, but especially the bookends follow a different internal logic. I loved the first chapter even though it wasn’t as effortlessly funny, because the situational gags accumulated into a complex stack of conflict between enveloping isolation and the disruptive social element of a sleeping wife, which may be amplifying the anxiety rather than a break back to reality offering relief from the horror story!

Le grand amour didn’t land as hard for me, but I admired its head-first dive into the powerless allure of fantasy, and escaping from the present into the place where the grass is always greener. Etaix knows that the isolationist in the westernized male will always live, in part, in his head, and drift into a state of longing for what it not in front of him. Here this acknowledgement is lifted to an accrual of gags born from secret building testosterone, and a disturbingly relatable pathos in a desire that isn’t necessarily helpful but is natural all the same.

And then there is Land of Milk and Honey, which halts everything and drops us into a post-May‘68 documentary. Etaix exploits opinions on the facades of law and order, ideological state apparatuses that connect us, but arguing for liberation from them associating free will with individualism as mutually exclusive from many systems of connectedness. However, by showing collectives sharing ideas and lots of concert footage, there is a sense of community breathing beyond these declared problems. Overall it's not an exceptional doc, but one that weaves to a strange beat. The result is unfocused and not very investing, but liberated from even the narrative inherent in most documentaries, so on a structural formalist level it remains in step with its thematic content.

In general there is a searing inescapable discomfort that is filtered through didacticism in these three on the second disc, which doesn’t exactly counter my initial point since the lessons are still rather broad. I can see how one would call some of these cynical, but you could also call Tati a pessimist and yet both filmmakers remain neutral in their assessments. Their protagonists display excitement, feel energy between people and bask in the admiration of soaking up the world like a curious sponge when alone. I guess just because we are all alone doesn’t mean we have to be perpetually lonely: and Etaix knows we won’t be. When all else fails, we have our imaginations.

[domino harvey]

From Sight and Sound (Summer 1965):