being married: two films by pierre étaix
by Douglas Messerli
Pierre Étaix and Jean-Claude Carrière (writers and directors) Heureux Anniversaire (Happy Anniversary) / 1962, USA 1963
Pierre Étaix and Jean-Claude Carrière (writers), Pierre Étaix (director) Le grand amour (The Great Love) / 1969
This movie, which won the 1963 Academy Award for short films, is a kind of road picture—in which no one goes anywhere. The earliest frames reveal a loving wife, La femme (Laurence Lignières) setting a formal table, hiding a gift within the napery and preparing a beautiful meal for her husband: it is, quite clearly, a special occasion, and when, soon after we see Le mari (Étaix) with a wrapped package and champagne, we recognize that is a shared holiday, in fact an anniversary. When the husband attempts to drive away from the shop where he has purchased the gift, cars have locked him in. He honks one of the cars horns, and a man, mid-shave, exits from the barber, politely moving the car so that the implacable Étaix can exit.
One major difference from Étaix’s films from other comic works of its time, is that it seldom focuses on only one figure. For this poor man, whose space is immediately overtaken by another automobile, is forced for the rest of the film to circle the block, shouting out to the barber over and over that he will be right back.
The happy husband, meanwhile, trapped in a traffic jam which the writers mock by showing various drivers engaged in every kind of activity—except driving—imaginable, from reading, playing games, dining, etc.
When traffic finally loosens a bit, our hero decides to stop by a flower shop. This time, he enters a narrow space, which, when he returns, permits him no entry into his car. For a few seconds, he even contemplates crawling through others to get to his own, but it is to no avail, and other trapped drivers berate him for the situation.
The flowers are crushed by the time hero is on his way again. Another visit to a shop, where he buys a ridiculous sunflower, ultimately ends with similar results: the flower is beheaded. By the time the poor man reaches his apartment door, the wife, having finished off the bottle and eaten much of the food, has fallen into a kind of drunken stupor, her had lying upon the dinner table. Le mari gently kisses her and rattles the little package she has hidden the napkins folds. He shall have to spend the night alone. Such is married life in the 20th century urban world.
In Le grand amour, moreover, we also know the whole story of their lives, and witness how Florence (whose appearance is so close to her mother that she takes the frightening prediction—“like mother, like daughter”—to an entirely new dimension) has manipulated him. The family relationship is comically reiterated by the scene in which, after having heard gossip of her husband’s philandering in the park, packs up to go home to “mamma.” The film brilliantly tracks her down the stairs, Pierre pleading with her as she goes, to watch her enter a room below wherein her mother and father sit.
Florence’s family have, despite Pierre’s reluctance, been only too happy to marry their daughter off, and before he has even had the opportunity to think things out, he finds himself in the cathedral with a hundred sober faces behind him, determined to see he follow through with the event. The wedding is made even a more hilarious when we discover the facts that, Étaix later married the actress playing Florence (Annie Fratellini), several members of her circus-performing family serving as figures in the film.
Whereas, Ewell attempts, in his imagination, to madly embrace his prey upon a piano stool, Pierre actually speaks out about his passion for his young secretary—without knowing, however, that he pouring his heart out to the ugly secretary about to leave the company, who quickly locks the door to bar his escape!
Throughout all this ridiculousness, Étaix maintains an aplomb and grace that has been compared, with good reason, to the dancing of Fred Astaire. It is perhaps, not accidently that the director reminisced, after the film, interviewed by Leonard Maltin and translated by Geneviève Bujold, that he works best with clowns and dancers. While Étaix perhaps sees his roots most clearly in the little tramp, I would argue that his personality is closer to the stoned face and the choreographed agility of Keaton. And like Keaton (and to a certain degree Chaplin) the marvel of his movements are that they actually occurr in real space instead of being recreated through computer simulation. As Étaix argues, “they were real, not something made up.” The beds truly rode down country lanes. “We closed off the streets, but a car still came up to us as the bed flew past,” he recalls.
Florence returns from her vacation just in time, but he cannot find her at the station. When he does finally encounter her, she looks younger, refreshed; so too, she tells him, does he. She has disembarked with a young handsome man, who stands holding her bags. Pierre is outraged. Who is the young man? Does she give her bags up to just anyone? So the couple goes arguing down the street, their discussion clearly providing fodder for the gossips for months.
When asked why he turned the action from their argument away to the distracted clearing up of the café waiter and the final shrug of a drunkard (another clown) who appeared throughout the film, Étaix commented: “I did not want to ‘end’ the film with any conclusion, good or bad. It may be that the fight between the two is the first time they are really talking to one another. But I did not want to say that. I wanted to turn the audiences’ attention away from whatever they thought the ending might really be. There is no one answer, no one ending.” The danger that puts all of Étaix’s characters on a kind of circus high-wire, remains. We can never know for sure whether they will balance themselves and walk across the tent-tops or tragically fall.
Los Angeles, November 17, 2011
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