Unknown French film master Pierre Étaix tickled funny bones long before his time.
The Long Lost Genius
of France’s Pierre Étaix
by Jamie Jobb
" ... one of those cinematic marvels that leaves me
shaking my head and wondering where it has been all my life."
- Richard Brody
A well-respected cinema authority who wrote “Everything is Cinema”, Richard Brody is referring to the long-lost films of Pierre Étaix. Writing in The New Yorker, Brody's wonderment is not unique to those of us who also finally got to see those very same “cinematic marvels” of an original French auteur who left a circus career in the 1960s to create several would-be classic motion pictures.
They would be classics but unfortunately Étaix (AY-tax) films were not widely distributed at the time and an international legal dispute -- only recently resolved -- kept his work out of circulation. What a sorry shame! Two years after his last feature in 1969, he quit filmmaking and ran away to join the circus again!
For half a century, the truncated filmmaking genius of Étaix was unknown even to avid cinema students outside France. Certainly we didn’t hear about him here in the USA. The great critic Roger Ebert -- who died in 2013, the year Étaix films appeared on screens worldwide -- never had a chance to review any of the Frenchman’s work.
Anyone familiar with French film will note the stylistic resemblance between Étaix and French comic master Jacques Tati. Étaix and Tati met early in their performance careers while both were making a living around Europe as mime clowns.
Étaix served as assistant director for Tati's classic "Mon Oncle" (1958) before moving on to create his own pictures. Étaix, like Tati, was an active participant in all aspects of filmmaking -- not unexpected given the man's roustabout circus career where performers also functioned as crew.
In 1963, the year I graduated high school in Miami, both Étaix and Federico Fellini were exhibiting their films in Europe. The Frenchman co-wrote, directed and acted in his first feature, “The Suitor”. Fellini, from Italy, was concocting his eighth-and-a-half feature film, unsurprisingly called "Fellini's 8 1/2".
Right after we finished high school, a friend who went on to manage the East Village’s legendary Cafe La MaMa dragged me to see "8 1/2" and that “foreign film” changed my life. Up to that point, I'd only seen Hollywood movies -- quite a lot of them. I worked as an usher at a large Lowe’s theater, that featured first-run Hollywood fare which often sold out the 1,500-seat house.
Our “pay package” each weekend included four comp tickets to other movie houses around Miami, none of which featured foreign films. My friend wanted to expand my cultural horizons and she certainly did. I went on to run a college cinema group which offered foreign films and classics to student audiences. At the time nobody knew about Étaix, and we wouldn’t know anything about him until we were retirees half a century later.
Certainly as a circus acrobat/clown and mime, Étaix understood Fellini's bombastic expansion of cinema's visual and sonic horizons, so the Frenchman paid homage to "8 1/2" as well as Fellini's "La Strada" (1954) in his feature "Yoyo" (1965).
Not coincidentally, Fellini also shared Étaix's high esteem for physical comedy. Fellini devotes an entire segment of “The Clowns” (1970) to Étaix and his wife Gustave Fratellini.
Fortunately all of Étaix funny film work is available now in one boxed set of DVDs (see sidebar below), including his shorts: “Insomnie” (1963). “Happy Anniversary” (1962) and “Rupture” (1961) as well as his four main features:
“The Suitor” (1963) - Étaix’s first feature as a solo director. A virtual silent comedy … with sound effects Live-at-home Pierre, the Suitor, puts down his star charts and his telescope to dedicate himself to growing up and finding himself a bride. He seems to have seven chances like Buster Keaton, but inexperienced Pierre’s first fantasy woman turns out to scare the heck out of him, so his chances are reduced to three and he ends up with the Swedish au pair who works for his folks.
“Yoyo” (1965) - A nameless millionaire lives alone in his mansion with his army of servants who seem to work in pairs. One day he invites a passing circus to park at his home for a few days. There he again falls in love with the artiste and her small son (their child?) … The circus leaves and the Depression hits, destroying his wealth and forcing him onto the road. He runs away from home to join the circus and rejoin his true home (which would mirror Étaix's real life circumstance six years later).
“As Long As You Have Your Health” (1966) - A four-part comedy of pain and suffering. Four episodes full of visual puns, slapstick and silent comedy gags. “Insomnia” (or “Stress”) where Étaix plays a double role, a sleepless man reading a horror book and a dream vampire spooking him from the book. “In the Movies” (or “Frustration”) finds Étaix looking for a seat in a crowded movie theater. “As Long As You Have Your Health” (or “Fatigue”) is Étaix trying to stay healthy before the final fateful chapter “Into the Woods No More” (or “Disaster”) which should say enough about that.
“The Great Love” (1969) - Étaix's first color film and his final feature, can be reduced to his line: “Life is a story we tell ourselves.” Here Étaix has the narrative freedom to jump his narrative forward and back, to skip from dreams to imagination in broad daylight. The main gag of the film is the great autobed sequence which was inspired by a friend's joke about living on a noisy avenue off the Arc de Triomphe and his dreaming of driving in bed. Note this difficult sequence was done with pure mechanics and not any sort of CGI, which did not exist in 1969.
Half a century is a long time to wait for anything -- particularly movies which were made to be distributed as soon as possible, so money spent could be repaid. It was a harsh business and without any worldwide distribution, it’s a total wonder that anyone could continue such an unrewarded output for a whole decade. Étaix did it without a smile on his face!
Pierre Étaix as seen from the front in “Yoyo” (1965)
Saving Étaix
We would not be seeing any of these films were it not for the dedication collaboration among Technicolor Foundation for Cinema Heritage, Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema and Studio 37 which combined to restore the films of Pierre Étaix.
For more information regarding their efforts, see:
Étaix on DVD
Complete Étaix features and shorts on DVD:
For a great overview of Étaix:
New York Times article:
Jacques Tati's major works:
Étaix Remix
On You Tube:
My Recovery Channel on You Tube has the three intercut clips of Étaix films remixed with scenes from Fellini and Tati films.
Fellini Yo Yo Étaix (15:24)
Route Tati Étaix (12:19)
Étaix and a Half (14:43)
For Further Review …
Fellini, Keaton and Étaix
Federico Fellini clearly understood the connection between the films of French clown genius Pierre Étaix and Buster Keaton. When Fellini interviewed Étaix for Fellini's "The Clowns", Fellini placed Keaton's photo in the background. And while Étaix obviously pays homage to Keaton's work, he also holds Fellini in high esteem as well.
The parallels among these three motion picture innovators were not lost on The New York Times when it featured Étaix upon the recent release of his lost masterpieces in 2013. Dave Kehr of The Times writes of the French filmmaker in “The Dark Side of Innocence”:
His wordlessness connects him to the universe of silent comedy, and his somber mien specifically to Buster Keaton, with whom he shares a love of order, symmetry and social ritual. "Yoyo" begins in 1925, in the guise of a silent film (though one filled out by Mr. Étaix's typically careful and creative use of post-dubbed sound effects) centered on a character who could be Rollo Treadway from Keaton's 1924 masterpiece, "The Navigator": he is a nameless millionaire, living with an army of servants in an absurdly overscale chateau.
His staff attends to his needs with a choreographed precision that suggests years of rehearsal and refinement. It is an existence that would be perfect if it were not so perfectly lonely. In the moments by himself, the millionaire sneaks glimpses of the photograph he keeps hidden away in a drawer, his eyes suddenly moist at the memory of the lost love — an itinerant circus performer (Luce Klein) — it portrays.
"Yoyo" finds an antidote to order in the freedom and energy of the circus, a notion on loan from Fellini (complete with a reference to "La Strada") that is itself undercut when the millionaire's son grows up to be a famous clown (again Mr. Étaix) trapped, much as his father was, by his success.
Two Other Silent Comics
Worthy of a Close Look
Max Linder documentary:
and
Charley Bowers:
and
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