Movies: Pierre Étaix

In the French harbor city of Le Havre, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa into the path of Marcel Marx, a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoe-shiner. With innate optimism and the tireless support of his community, Marcel stands up to offi...

Genial, bumbling Monsieur Hulot loves his top-floor apartment in a grimy corner of the city, and cannot fathom why his sister's family has moved to the suburbs. Their house is an ultra-modern nightmare, which Hulot only visits for the sake of stealin...

Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in...

Fellini exposes his great attraction for the clowns and the world of the circus first recalling a childhood experience when the circus arrives nearby his home. Then he joins his crew and travel from Italy to Paris chasing the last greatest European c...

In Paris around 1900, a young man raised by his wealthy uncle plots revenge after his cousin is betrothed to a rich neighbor. He steals the fiancé's family jewels, reveling in the thrill, and sets off on a lifelong path of burglary....

The story follows the son of a millionaire from the 1920s to the 1960s. After losing his fortune in the stock-exchange crash, he teams up with an equestrienne and becomes a circus clown....

The wife of a British diplomat in Paris takes a chimpanzee as her lover....

Absent-minded yet cultured, Pierre answers his parents demands to wed by ignoring both astronomy and the housemaid, instead falling head-over-heels for rich damsels....

An anthology film consisting of four stories. (1) A man reads a Dracula novel while in bed, but cannot seem to tell the novel from reality, causing sleep troubles. (2) A man cannot escape the absurd ads he saw at the movie theater that day. (3) A pol...

Pierre married Florence, the only daughter of a small industrialist. 15 years later, he is the boss, but his middle-class life worries him a lot. When a new young and lovely secretary comes, he starts dreaming....

Heureux Anniversaire is a 1962 French short comedy film directed by Pierre Étaix. While his wife impatiently waits and gets drunk, a husband tries to get the appropriate anniversary gifts and fight his way home through traffic in time for their celeb...

A man receives a breakup letter from his sweetheart, who sends him back his photo, in pieces. The pained lover decides to reply. Fountain pen, penholder, desk, stamps, paper and inkwell all contrive diabolically to thwart him....

It's about a couple owning a small hotel who are trying to sell it....

Two old friends have urban adventures connected to the skull of an executed French aristocrat....

Since the early days, Jerry Lewis—in the line of Chaplin, Keaton and Laurel—had the masses laughing with his visual gags, pantomime sketches and signature slapstick humor. Yet Lewis was far more than just a clown. He was also a groundbreaking filmmak...

When he loses his position as a powerful government minister, Vincent is dropped by his pretty mistress and must begin life anew, without the privileges of power. As he gradually becomes acquainted with milieus which he d either forgotten or never kn...

Short film by Pierre Etaix, edited out from the anthology film As Long as You've Got Your Health (1966)....

Jean Lerat begins his military service at an army camp. Despite his aunt’s attempts to pull a few strings to his advantage, the unfortunate Lerat manages to get on the wrong side of his bullying colonel…...

Pierre Etaix’s most radical film, and perhaps unsurprisingly the one that effectively ended his career in cinema, Land of Milk and Honey is a fascinating investigative documentary about post–May ’68 French society....

A filmmaker finds creative freedom more elusive than he imagined in this ironic comedy-drama. Tired of the state-appointed producers and censorship in his homeland, Soviet Georgia, Niko decides to move to France, only to find that he has merely trade...