Yoyo

This elaborately conceived and brilliantly mounted comedy is Pierre Etaix’s most beloved movie, as well as his personal favorite. Beginning as a clever homage to silent film, complete with intertitles, Yoyo blossoms into a poignant family saga (in which Etaix plays both a father and his grown son) and a celebration of the circus Etaix adored. Chock-full of nimble sight gags and ingenious sound effects, Yoyo is very sweet, a little bit melancholy, and wholly imaginative.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1965
  • 98 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.66:1
  • French

Available In

Collector's Set

Pierre Etaix

Pierre Etaix

Blu-ray Box Set

2 Discs

$41.96

Collector's Set

Pierre Etaix

Pierre Etaix

DVD Box Set

3 Discs

$34.96

Yoyo
Cast
Pierre Etaix
Yoyo/Millionaire
Claudine Auger
Isolina
Luce Klein
Horsewoman
Philippe Dionnet
Young Yoyo
Credits
Director
Pierre Etaix
Produced by
Paul Claudon
Screenplay
Pierre Etaix
Screenplay
Jean-Claude Carrière
Cinematography
Jean Boffety
Editor
Henri Lanoë
Set design
Raymond Gabutti
Set design
Raymond Tournon
Music
Jean Paillaud

Current

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Among filmmaker Pierre Etaix’s many eclectic accomplishments is his appearance as one of the thieves in Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket. However, you probably won’t be able to spot him: all that’s left of his performance is one o…
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Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in dropped from a blue sky and e…

By David Cairns

Pierre Etaix in Philadelphia

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Tomorrow, the International House Philadelphia salutes French actor-director Pierre Etaix with a double dose of his unique brand of physical comedy. The screening kicks off with As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966), a compendium of four hilario…

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Jean-Claude Carrière

Writer

Jean-Claude Carrière
Jean-Claude Carrière

A quietly influential force in art cinema throughout the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (also an author, actor, opera librettist, and occasional director) has collaborated with such important screen artists as Luis Buñuel, Milos Forman, Jean-Luc Godard, Philip Kaufman, Louis Malle, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, and Andrzej Wajda. He got his start working with the comic filmmaker Pierre Etaix on the Oscar-winning slapstick short Happy Anniversary (1962), which the two codirected; Carrière would go on to cowrite all of Etaix’s 1960s features. Meanwhile, Buñuel enlisted Carrière to cowrite 1964’s Diary of a Chambermaid, the beginning of a grand partnership that would also result in increasingly surreal visions like Belle de jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). (In 2012, Carrière said of working with Buñuel, “How we mixed together is impossible to say. One started an idea, the other finished it.”) As is clear from those productions, he has a way with the absurd, but the versatile and erudite Carrière is also a keen literary adapter, translating such daunting novels as The Tin Drum and The Unbearable Lightness of Being into formidable films. Carrière’s career continues to take surprising turns: he has a small but crucial role in Abbas Kiarostami’s 2010 Certified Copy, for example.