The films of Pierre Etaix, Part Two

For his second feature, Yoyo (1965, 92 mins), French filmmaker Pierre Etaix entered his favoured world of the circus. (In 1973 he set up a circus school in France with wife Annie Fratellini, who was from a famous circus family.) Following the 1929 economic crash - and at the introduction of sound - a bored industrialist (Etaix) runs off with the mother of his son to form their own mini circus; the son grows up to become a famous clown, Yoyo, who dreams of restoring the old family château.

Etaix demonstrates his sound ear and balanced eye, though Yoyo's not quite as visually rich as Le soupirant, with its lovely scenes of Paris; typically, the director never quite allows himself a full-on happy ending. There are daring tributes to Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin and a tiny animation that would no doubt thrill avowed fan Terry Gilliam. Another fan, François Truffaut, wrote to Etaix after seeing Yoyo: 'It's a beautiful film in which I loved every shot and every idea, and which taught me many things about movies.' That's not bad, is it?

Etaix's first colour movie, and the best full-length introduction to his magical sensibility, Le grand amour (The Great Love; 1969, 85 mins), was followed by an assemblage of four sketches, Tant qu'on a la santé (As Long As You're Healthy; 1966/'71, 65 mins), in black-and-white and colour. It has some nice touches but rises to its peak in the last segment, Nous n'irons plus aux bois, which lays bare in sepia tones city folks' countryside idyll.

Etaix spent seven months assembling 4km of footage of the French on holiday alongside interviews on subjects as various as sexuality, advertising and the director himself, for his final conventional movie, Pays de Cocagne (Land of Milk and Honey; 1971, 80 mins). The result proved to be at odds with France's self-image post May 1968 - his camera seems more jaded than usual - and it proved to be his final conventional movie, a foray into the Omnimax format with old partner Jean-Claude Carrière in 1989 notwithstanding.

The films of Pierre Etaix, Part One

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki was unfortunate not to be officially recognised among a remarkably strong line-up at Cannes this year. His was one of many welcome returns, not least because his new movie, Le Havre, features remarkable French director Pierre Etaix (pictured above, left). Etaix was fêted at Cannes last year when his masterpiece Le grand amour (The Great Love, 1969) was screened by way of highlighting the restoration of his tremendous back catalogue of five features, long lost amid contractual constrictions and to the effects of time on film stock.

Trained as an artist, Etaix served a form of apprenticeship on Jacques Tati's Mon oncle (1958). Etaix illustrated a novelisation of Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot by Jean-Claude Carrière (also 1958) and the duo continued to collaborate on all of Etaix's best work, starting with perfect short, Rupture (1961); a second, Heureux anniversaire (Happy Anniversary), won the Oscar for best short film in 1963. (Carrière has gone on to work with Luis Buñuel, Milos Forman, Jonathan Glazer, Michael Haneke, Philip Kaufman, Louis Malle and Volker Schlöndorff, among many others.)

Rupture introduced Etaix's perennial character - the writer-director starred in his first four features - the dapper, slightly dreamy office worker. It was a role he developed for his first full-length film, Le soupirant (The Suitor; 1963, 83 mins). Le soupirant shares many themes with Etaix's best film, Le grand amour: the bourgeois lead lives at home with his parents; in the pursuit of love a series of misunderstandings occurs. The film features a notably discordant soundtrack and is at its most exuberant when Etaix gives rein to his clown's instincts. Elsewhere are the familiar sleight of hand and moments of inspired fantasy featuring automated objects.

Part two follows tomorrow…

Pierre Etaix: The Great Love, slight return

On the night I saw my first film by French director Pierre Etaix, I also met him - at a screening in London's estimable Ciné Lumiere. Etaix was guest of honour and - 10 days short of his 82nd birthday - stepped onto the stage with a bounce; afterwards he happily signed autographs, adding a trademark clown doodle, and retained a sparkle in his eyes despite what must have been a tiring evening. Part of his joy, he said, was to meet Terry Gilliam, who introduced Etaix's The Great Love (Le grand amour, 1969) that night.

A cabaret performer and clown, Etaix served as assistant director to Jacques Tati on Mon oncle (1958), also creating the iconic illustration for the film's poster. Following this apprenticeship of sorts, Etaix went on to direct and star in a series of his own features. While Tati's work is imbued with a sadness at the passing of the past (highlighted nowhere better than in Sylvain Chomet's beautiful The Illusionist, 2010, from a script by Tati), Etaix is more ambivalent, recognising the values of tradition while embracing the new. (In 1989 Etaix worked on a film in a groundbreaking new 3D format, Omnimax, which has no screen but places the audience at the centre of the action.)

His humour has probably dated better than some of Tati's films, too, though that may be because Etaix's films have been hidden from public view for a generation due to what is consistently referred to as a 'legal imbroglio'. There is nothing forced about his work; while Tati can sometimes seem a tad ponderous, The Great Love is at once snappy and measured. Etaix was a contemporary of the Nouvelle Vague and says he was approached by Truffaut to help with a dance scene in Jules et Jim (1962) but the collaboration didn't happen: 'They [the Nouvelle Vague] didn't need me.'

Because I saw Etaix giving a brief introduction before viewing The Great Love, I hadn't been prepared to see him as a young man in the film's main role. Incredible, I thought, how Etaix managed to find a lead actor who looks exactly as he would have done then. It was as if I were seeing the premiere of a new work the 81-year-old director had travelled back 42 years in time to make.

Pierre Etaix: The Great Love

'It started badly…' - Pierre

I've just seen the film of the year: it was made in 1968. This evening, Terry Gilliam introduced The Great Love (Le grand amour) at London's wonderful Ciné Lumière with director Pierre Etaix in attendance. The film is a whimsical take on provincial mores and marriage; it's as if Ozu's Late Autumn (1960) were invaded by the spirit of Les demoiselles de Rochefort (1967), this time not under the hand of Jacques Demy but invested with the anarchical comic outlook of Laurel and Hardy.

Etaix considered filming The Great Love all over France to create a composite city but, much to his producer's relief, settled on Tours, in the middle of the country. The film's centres are its main characters' home, the office, a city park, the railway station and a nearby café, filled with its habitués - the setting of so many bleak Simenon novels invaded by transcendent Technicolor.

Etaix's clown sensibility is captured in a wonderful scene where he, in the lead role, tries to remember whether he met his wife-to-be - played by real-life first wife Annie Fratellini (of a famous circus family) - on the terrace or inside that bar. One central set-piece is a surrealistic dream: Godard's Week End (1967) played out in motorised beds.

The sequence begins with Etaix's character, married Pierre, dreaming of his beautiful new secretary, Agnes. His bed wheels itself out of the marital bedroom and into the wider world (pictured), reminiscent of those beautiful closing scenes in two films separated by generations and temperaments: Fellini's I Vitelloni (1953) and Roy Andersson's You, the Living (2007). They're some of my most-loved sequences in all cinema, to which I can add a new favourite.

Asked for his advice to would-be directors, Etaix's answer could be translated as make what you love, or do what you love. A whole new audience is set to fall in love with his recently restored work; certainly every director should now be expected to perform sleight-of-hand tricks during Q&As, as the soon-to-be 82 year old did.

His debut feature, Le soupirant (1963), screens at the Ciné Lumière tomorrow and, on this showing, I can't recommend it enough. I shall return to Pierre Etaix.