655 Pierre Étaix

[cungar]

Discovered him on TCM and was totally in love with his work instantly. The horror book part of As Long as You've Got Your Health is absolutely the most brilliant comic vignette I've seen in ages. Ordered this on Amazon the next morning.

[knives]

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but the documentary in this set seems to be different from the one in the French set and that Zedz refers to earlier. This one is an hour in length and goes by a different name. Does anyone know if they actually are in total different films?

[swo17]

It must be a different doc, also by Odile Etaix, since it was made after the French set came out. From the description of the one on the French set, it seems to cover the same kind of ground. Maybe the doc on the Criterion is an extended version? In any case, it's a good primer on Etaix (though perhaps best saved until after you've seen all of the films, so as not to spoil some of their best gags). I believe it also constitutes the official induction of Jerry Lewis into the Collection.

I watched most of the set over the last two days, and it's really great. I particularly loved The Suitor, a remake of Keaton's Seven Chances, and As Long as You've Got Your Health.) The set is also illustrative of how little distance there is between an Eclipse set and a strong contender for boxset of the year.

[knives]

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).

[How rude!]

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 dance sequence is one of the the most perfect comic scenes I have viewed. Sheer perfection. I don't have the set....yet, but it is a must-buy release.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I've sampled a few of the Etaix's in their run at Film Forum and they're not to my taste. Pedestrian in several senses. Films about how dull and annoying the modern world is, quite the opposite in spirit to Tati or Chaplin, artists capable of expressing wonder in the same breath as reasoned criticism. I might take one more chance on Yoyo if the opportunity presents itself but some crypts are best left undisturbed.

One particularly egregious moment I noticed today in short En pleine forme: an obvious visual quotation of Night and Fog's opening tracking shots of barbed wire, here used to make the sinister but shallow assertion that campgrounds are somehow equivalent to concentration camps. Personally I can't imagine that even Lewis' much maligned (and much unseen) Day the Clown Cried would be so callous. Then again, maybe in sixties France Night and Fog was the equivalent of Schindler's List in today's culture, but somehow I find that hard to swallow.

[BusterK]

I think you should be careful when you state something is "an obvious visual quotation." It was not so obvious to me. Etaix may have chosen to do a tracking shot of the barbed wire without ever having seen Night and Fog. Many penal institutions are surrounded by barbed wire. It is just as likely that Etaix found it ironic that free men and women need to cage themselves in to enjoy a holiday. It is a huge and, I believe, erroneous leap to state that he was equating these silly vacationers with Holocaust victims.

And I highly disagree that Etaix's films are "pedestrian" in any sense. Personally, I believe Le Grande Amour to be a work of genius, especially the dream sequence. Seeing each of his films for the first time has been pure heaven for me. Yes, his work may be more biting than Tati's (though certainly not Chaplin's), but Etaix is no misanthrope. Moreover, every comic filmmaker has his or her own unique view of the world and life, but they all share the primary aim of making people laugh. Certainly by that measure, Etaix's films were and are a success -- though that may be most evident to viewers who possess a sense of humor.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

I've sampled a few of the Etaix's in their run at Film Forum and they're not to my taste. Pedestrian in several senses. Films about how dull and annoying the modern world is, quite the opposite in spirit to Tati or Chaplin, artists capable of expressing wonder in the same breath as reasoned criticism. I might take one more chance on Yoyo if the opportunity presents itself but some crypts are best left undisturbed.

You should definitely give Yoyo a go. I attended a 35mm screening of it last year and it blew my mind. It's the only of his works that I've seen yet but needless to say I was very exicted when Criterion announced their set only months after I saw the film (which I rank as one of comedy cinema's forgotten gems). The plot is kind of Limelight'ish in a sincere Chaplin way; shots are filmed meticulously like Tati would have done and some of the gags reminded me of Keaton. In other words: The sum of all the best. I've seen most of the filmographies of the mentioned directors and imho Yoyo is definitely up there with the greatest. Like I said, I haven't seen any other of his film, so I can't say if they are pedestrian, but that is definitely not a term I would use to describe Yoyo!

[Minkin]

Svet gives a glowing review over at Bluray.com

This is a phenomenal release, one of the very best to be released by a U.S. distributor since the high-definition format was launched. It reintroduces to the world a true master, one that should be admired as much as Jacques Tati, Louis de Funès, Toto, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin. I would like to recommend it to everyone, even to those of you who reside on the other side of the Atlantic. If you don't have a Region-Free player, buy one, and import Criterion's release. I guarantee it will become one of the most treasured releases in your collection. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Thus far, I've only caught Happy Anniversary (from TCM) - and absolutely loved it. Can't wait to have this set in about two months time (BN sale)!
Criterion, see how much better this turned out rather than an Eclipse set?

[Mr Sausage]

DISCUSSION ENDS MONDAY, JANUARY 20th AT 6:00 AM.

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[swo17]

Assuming you watch the films on this set in chronological order, and why not, the memory of seeing this film gets inextricably tied to the feelings of first discovering a major, too long neglected talent, even though some of the later films might be more satisfying in the long run. (My personal favorite is As Long As You've Got Your Health.) But even if the story is perhaps less consequential, this is probably the Étaix that feels most like a Keaton film and, accordingly, is the most jam-packed with inspired gags.

These early Étaix films also marked the entry of Jean-Claude Carrière into the world of film, which is in itself deserving of some kind of an award.

[jindianajonz]

Does anyone else get a sense of... I don't know, darkness or misanthropy, from this film? I don't find most of the characters in this film to be terribly sympathetic. The suitor is too socially awkward to really be relatable; he is somebody that the audience is meant to mock from a distance as opposed to sympathizing with his plight. The drunken woman who ends up with faux-Hulot is terribly obnoxious, and the closest thing she has to a redeeming quality is how pitiful she is. Even the father, who is about as charming as anybody else in the movie, struck me as being very cold when he just stared at and ignored the housekeeper instead of helping her with her French (I know, it's just a gag, but the way he decided to keep his distance from her instead of reaching out to meet her halfway is where I realized how I had been keeping my distance from these characters throughout the film).

I don't mean to say that this film is lousy or unenjoyable (though I did find myself liking As Long As You've Got Your Health and Yoyo much more than this one) but when I make the inevitable comparison to Tati, I find that I don't have the same warm feelings towards Etaix's characters that I did towards Tati's.

[Mr Sausage]

What an effortlessly charming film. I enjoyed it immensely, but I can't really think of much to say about it beyond listing gags I liked. I didn't at all get a feeling of darkness or misanthropy from it--those are pretty extreme words for some very mild things. I've never considered social awkwardness and relatibility to be mutually exclusive, and the father's reaction to that baffling moment with the book and the table was superb, as was Etaix's. Etaix learned some great lessons from Keaton on how to underplay reactions and derive humour from what is essentially the Kuleshov effect. The ending was perfect and not a little subversive (of convention, anyway) by closing not with the couple embracing but being drawn apart. I can't tell if I think the film is essentially sad or hopeful. Whichever one, it wears it lightly, and for all the bumps it throws at its protagonist, it never treats him cruelly. Embarrassment is often glossed over (by a cut or a quick escape) instead of milked, and our hero isn't put through any painful physical comedy. Everything is done with grace and good cheer.

[Mr Sausage]

So...did everyone vote for this because they love it and thought they'd have a lot of things to say about it, or because they wanted an excuse to dip into the Etaix set and, like me, found they don't actually have much to say? Or are we still sort of on Holiday, mentally?

[Drucker]

I didn't vote for it, but also never got around to picking up the Etaix set (which also isn't on Netflix). Figured I'd just take a week off. It's too bad discussion is so light (but I'm very excited to finally watch Z next week).

[Lemmy Caution]

Hopefully I'll get this set in the next few days.
I've only spotted the Blu and I don't indulge in that.
Asked my local shop if they could get it and hold it for me.
If not, I'll go into scramble mode.
Interested in this set, even if I know next to nothing about it.

[Emak-Bakia]

I don't believe I voted for this one (there should be a finger pointing smilie for this occasion), but I did re-watch it a few days ago. I hope people aren't letting the lack of discussion dissuade them from watching it, because it's a wonderful film. But just like you, Mr. Sausage, I simply can't think of a whole lot to say - I think you pretty much said everything I wanted to say (and more) with your above post. Maybe I'll watch it again and calculate the GPM (Gags Per Minute).

[Sloper]

One of the great things about this film (and I think it's true of Tati as well) is that the jokes are even funnier the second time around, when you know they're coming. They're so carefully, delicately executed that for the most part they don't elicit belly-laughs on a first viewing, but there's so much more pleasure to be had in savouring the build-up to the punchlines. Some examples: Pierre sleep-walking into the back of the van; Pierre wiping the doorknob and then creeping away like a murderer; the business with the chest of drawers, the lamp-shade and the mirror in the 'roomful of Stellas' scene (my favourite); and all the backstage chaos, especially the collapsing chair and moth-eaten buttons. Etaix doesn't simply want to make the audience laugh, he wants to execute these gags in the most perfect and elegant way possible. I'm totally new to his films, but I imagine they have more longevity than most comedies for precisely this reason.

I didn't find this film misanthropic at all, though it is definitely a film about alienation. This is signalled in the red-herring title sequence and opening shots, which flag up Pierre's obsession with astronomy as his defining feature. Perhaps this is a Tati-esque satire on how modern fads tend to distance us from our fellow human beings. I loved the extraterrestrial chime effects standing in for dialogue in Pierre's fantasy date. That whole sequence is brilliantly done, especially the dancing chair, the curtains set on fire, and the sound effects when he lays out the glasses (smaller ones when he realises the bottle is nearly empty).

The society outside the house is an alien world to Pierre, and he operates like an alien when he ventures into it; but this is partly because this world is governed by silly social conventions (light a woman's cigarette, pay her bill, talk to her dog, show her how far your car aerial extends, brag about how deeply into jazz you are) that are, paradoxically, even more alienating and de-humanising than Pierre's astronomical fixation.

His insane pursuit of Stella is just a naive and painfully earnest acting-out of fantasies that millions seem to have been consumed by, and Pierre's naivety quickly brings him close enough to his idol to realise that the image on the screen had nothing to do with the real woman (a rather ageist joke, I suppose, but the joke is on Stella's fans rather than Stella herself).

The loud, drunken woman Pierre accidentally falls in with is, on one level, another object of gentle satire, but to me it seems the film's attitude towards her is largely celebratory; she's unbearable in a really endearing way, and her relentless, hilarious inappropriateness makes her a sort of kindred spirit for Pierre. Less of a kindred spirit than the modest, unassuming young woman who can hardly speak a word of French, but still, she does end up with a man who resembles Etaix's mentor's alter-ego, which suggests some kind of affinity.

All that said, I can understand jindianajonz's point about the film's coldness compared to Tati. Interesting that Etaix uses quite a lot of close-ups, whereas Tati never (or almost never?) used them, and yet there seems to be far more human warmth in the latter's work. This isn't really a paradox, because Tati's large canvases often give an impression of the connectedness, or at least potential connectedness, of the scattered human beings on view - a sense of the things they have in common, that (could) bind them together - whereas Etaix is more Keaton-esque in his focus on the solitary, naive little alien trying to get a grip on the world around him. Pierre isn't as well-meaning as Hulot, though he is similarly disaster-prone, and there are moments of (very funny) meanness that Hulot would never have indulged in, such as the old lady's grocery bags or the toast and broken saucer crumbled onto the floor. But I prefer this kind of dry, even slightly bitter humour to Tati's more sentimental approach.

[swo17]

That does it, I'm changing my member of the year vote to Sloper.

Although it must be true that this film is difficult to talk about, because his post is only half as long as usual.

[domino harvey]

I sought out my first Etaix film a couple years ago after seeing Godard's placement of YoYo in his yearly top ten. That film like this one was filled with silent comedy-ready gags, but it also had a stronger narrative to hang its goofy displays on and is by any metric I can imagine a better film. I laughed out loud several times in the Suitor and it's not a film I dislike, but I am also left without much else to say for it. I think, if I'm being honest, the film needed to be funnier to justify its existence as a feature. As it is the best parts play out like Jerry Lewis leftovers (And something like the Ladies Man is a clear influence here) more than the Laurel and Hardy Etaix apparently longed after if one believes his introduction-- and there's nothing wrong with that, but the subdued energy of Etaix requires something else that's just not present in this feature. So no, I don't view the film as downbeat, misanthropic, or overly negative in the slightest-- it's too ambivalent for that.

[Mr Sausage]

That does it, I'm changing my member of the year vote to Sloper.

Although it must be true that this film is difficult to talk about, because his post is only half as long as usual.

Sloper writes the kind of posts that make you think "why did I even bother?" Or at least I do.

[movielocke]

So...did everyone vote for this because they love it and thought they'd have a lot of things to say about it, or because they wanted an excuse to dip into the Etaix set and, like me, found they don't actually have much to say? Or are we still sort of on Holiday, mentally?

the latter, hopefully I can find time to post something more robust than "buster keaton by way of Charlie Brown" this weekend.

[matrixschmatrix]

I have to be honest, I'm cramming for the 70s project and I don't have as much room for Film Club viewings as I did when I voted for this. I think in the future I'd like to stick to voting a couple weeks in advance, the early voting stuff made me too detached from whatever was coming up.

[movielocke]

I could see where my opinion of the Suitor would increase greatly on a second viewing--by that I mean that I feel like I would enjoy the film and the gags much more if I knew they were coming and how it all turns out. To a certain extent, the film left me cringing in empathetic embarrassment for the aspergery-ness of the character and the calamitous social situations he gets himself into. And once the initial viewing is out of the way, I can see the film without bothering to be emotionally open to it, and just laugh at the inventive sillyness of it all. The film at times reminded me of Three Ages, in that it's almost a series of short films that can also play as a single feature, although much more cohesive than Keaton's rather explicit hedged bet.

Despite being so easily compared to Keaton, I find him as a character far more pathetic and inept than Keaton generally was--hence my comparison to the morose Charlie Brown in the previous post. The world would often conspire against Keaton, whereas for Etaix he is his own worst enemy, and if anything, the world is relatively benevolent towards his foibles, rather than a participant in them.

[jindianajonz]

I think you guys are explaining what I meant by misanthropy much better than I am apparently capable of, and clearly misanthropy was the wrong word to use. Movielocke states it well, that The Suitor is his own worst enemy, but Etaix puts us the audience at a distance from him so that we laugh directly at his shortcomings. I like how Movielocke calls him "aspergery", since I did feeling vaguely remeniscent of being back in middle school and laughing at somebody with some sort of physical or mental disability. I don't want to call the film mean or try to imply that we should feel guilty over laughing at it; it is much too light of a film to take that seriously. I just wanted to point out the contrast between The Suitor's humor and something like M. Hulot's Holiday, where we laugh not directly at the character's failings, but because we can empathize with the frustrations he feels when the world happens to not go his way (I'm thinking of the scene where the Taffy keeps falling, and Hulot earnestly tries to keep it up). Maybe it would have been better to simply say that I'm seeing a touch of W.C. Fields in the humor of this film.