When a Circus Clown Moves from the Bright Spotlight to the Glow of Film: 'Pierre Etaix'
Pierre Étaix in Yoyo (1965)
from: popmatters.com
By Michael Buening
6 June 2013
Last October the Film Forum in New York City screened the five features and three shorts that were created by the French film director and comic actor, Pierre Étaix. (The series was partially cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy.) Film nerds were salivating. If you haven’t heard of Étaix you are not alone. His films have rarely been screened since their creation, due to a long legal fight with his distribution company, which has led to his movies being more or less scrubbed from film history. But the legal issues have finally been resolved, new digital masters were created from the damaged negatives in 2010, and after being shown at the Film Forum, they are now being released as a box set by Criterion.
The story of the film’s loss and rediscovery makes for a fascinating and attractive story. In addition to his work as a director, Étaix was also a skilled circus clown and draftsmen and worked for a time as a gag writer and set designer for Jacques Tati. Étaix is a close friend to Jerry Lewis. Most of his film’s scripts were co-written by Jean-Claude Carrière, a hugely important screenwriter in European film from the ‘60s until today. In the general enthusiasm at discovering a potentially forgotten master there has been a bit of over-adulation. Étaix is not Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati, and I don’t think any of his movies could be called masterpieces. But some of them are very good, they are imaginative and carefully composed, with a distinctive and accomplished vision that deserves rediscovery.
read more:
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/171854-pierre-etaix/
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