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.

France
1965
98 minutes
Black & White
1.66:1
French

Available In

Collector's Set

Pierre Etaix

Blu-ray Box Set

2 Discs

$41.96

Collector's Set

Pierre Etaix

DVD Box Set

3 Discs

$34.96

Cast & Credits

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

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Explore

Jean-Claude Carrière

Writer

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.