Pierre is a serious-minded young man with a lot of good will but he doesn’t feel comfortable in this 20th century, threatened as it is by the effects of absurd modernism. It’s nothing but noise and rush in an environment infested by cranes and cars. Everything shakes in the street and in his apartment. Because of the vibration, his girlfriend’s portrait falls into the waste paper basket. She is astonished when she arrives. She runs out. Unable to stand the noise any longer, Pierre goes to the countryside to recover and savor the delights of silence. –Transilvania International Film Festival
Pierre Étaix (born 23 November 1928, Roanne, Loire) is a French clown, comedian and filmmaker. Étaix made a series of acclaimed short- and feature-length films in the 1960s, many of them co-written by influential screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière. He has won an Academy Award.
As an actor, assistant director and gag writer, Étaix has worked with the likes of Jacques Tati, Robert Bresson, Nagisa Oshima, Otar Iosseliani and Jerry Lewis, who cast the comedian in his unreleased film The Day the Clown Cried.
Born and raised in Roanne, France, Pierre Étaix moved to Paris in 1954 to work as an illustrator and cabaret performer. He met the filmmaker and clown Jacques Tati, and began to help Tati work on the project that later became Mon Oncle, on which Étaix served as assistant director. Two years later, Étaix made his first short films: Rupture and Heureux Anniversaire; the latter won Étaix an Academy Award for Best Short Subject. The films also marked the first produced screenplays… read more
A few laughs and clever bits submerged in much mediocrity dragged out for too long.
As Pierre Etaix’s films finally get shown in the US, a look at Etaix’s illustrations for Jacques Tati and at the posters for his own films.