1966 comedy anthology
Rating: 14/20
Plot: Four comedy shorts from the mind of Pierre Etaix.
More mostly wordless comedy from Etaix, one of my favorite discoveries of the year. I'm not sure anything is truly great here, but this is my kind of comedy. Fans of Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd or Tati will find more than enough to enjoy with these. So much of silent comedy is about how our actions affect others, sometimes in unexpected ways. That's definitely true with one of the best of these shorts, the last one involving a hunter, a couple trying to enjoy a picnic, and a man building a fence. The penultimate one, the one that shares its title with the collection, might be the funniest, a series of gags that deal, a very Tati-esque way, with the stresses of urbanized modern life. It's a short that starts with a jackhammering sequence that might be the best example I've seen to humans looking like Warner Brother cartoon characters. The second short squeezes every single ounce of funny out of an idea that doesn't seem like it would have all that much funny--a guy trying to watch a movie. And the first is a cute little story of an insomniac enjoying a vampire novel.
This isn't Yoyo, and unfortunately, it doesn't seem that Etaix had another Yoyo in him, but this kind of stuff is great for people like me who wished the 1920s had lasted a lot longer. And typing that sentence just gave me a great idea for a movie.
I am unable to explain that poster. Slim picking with this one.
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