Academy Award-winning French auteur Pierre Étaix directed and starred in the offbeat comedy Yoyo (1965). He also co-wrote the screenplay with his frequent collaborator, Jean-Claude Carrière, whom he had met while the two worked for the legendary filmmaker Jacques Tati. Shot on location around France and at the Paris-Studio-Cinéma in Paris, Yoyo has Étaix playing dual roles: in the first half, he is a sad and lonely millionaire living in baronial splendor, surrounded by those summoned to entertain him, yet consumed with thoughts of a lost love - a circus performer (Luce Klein) with a child (Philippe Dionnet) who looks just like him. The 1929 stock market crash reaches France and the millionaire is wiped out, so he leaves everything behind to join the circus and his love. In the second half of the film, which takes place after the end of World War II, the millionaire's child has grown to be Yoyo the circus clown (also played by Étaix) and the story shifts to follow him.

Yoyo was released in France on February 19, 1965 and won two awards at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival: Best Film for the Youth and the OCIC Award, as well as being nominated for the Palme d'Or. But the film's confusing narrative and abstract comedy did not make it a success at the commercial box office and earned Étaix unexpectedly negative reviews, which affected the filmmaker greatly.

The negative reviews continued when the film was released in the United States two years later in February 1967. Bosley Crowther, critic for The New York Times wrote that Étaix was "marvelously talented. He is a master of subtle mimicry, and he plays all sorts of charming little incidents with great sensitivity and wit. [...] In scores of little details, he shreds pomposity and social arrogance to bits. But that's the trouble with his picture. It's too casual, fragmented, and loose. It's as though Mr. Étaix were writing his script as he goes along, tossing in scenes he remembers from somebody else's film, letting himself do something (he also plays several minor roles without taking credit for them) more to display his virtuosity than to develop a story and character. As a consequence, Yoyo is uneven. It dangles and has its ups and downs very much like the plaything from which its name is derived." Critics notwithstanding, Étaix later would claim that Yoyo was his own personal favorite of all his films.

While on vacation in Paris, Jerry Lewis saw Yoyo and wanted to meet Étaix, and Henri Langlois, the great film historian and preservationist, was able to bring the two together. Despite the lack of a common language, the comedians got on beautifully. Later, they would work together in the still unreleased but legendary Lewis film about the Holocaust, The Day the Clown Cried shot in 1972. Pierre Étaix died on October 14, 2016 at the age of 87.

By Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

Cairns, David "The Return of Étaix" https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2746-the-return-of-etaix
https://www.criterion.com/films/28454-yoyo
Crowther, Bosley "Screen: 'Yo Yo' Arrives: Carnegie Cinema Shows French Comic Film" The New York Times 1 Mar 67
The Internet Movie Database