As Long As You’ve Got Your Health (1966, Pierre Etaix)

There’s something to this Etaix rediscovery after all. This is a disarmingly funny series of shorts cobbled together into a feature – I figured it’d make for a good Etaix intro. I’ve seen him as an actor recently in Le Havre, and he looks not entirely different 45 years earlier. Cowriter Jean-Claude Carriere also worked on Bunuel’s late films

DCairns: “Into a perfect, crisp frame steps a man who is as elegant and sharp as his own composition and who moves in rhythm with the film around him, every changing angle of his body a graphic/poetic statement. You may mistake his silhouette for another’s—but not when it moves. And movement is his art form.”

Insomnia
In color, Etaix stays awake reading a vampire novel, seen in b/w episodes, as his wife sleeps next to him. The stories start to affect each other, culminating in the wife becoming a vampire.

The Movies
1960’s version of the annoyances encountered when going out to the movies – things were difficult even before cell phones. This turns into an extended advertising parody.

As Long As You’ve Got Your Health
A wide view of bustling city life – “everyone’s nerves are constantly shot”. Crowds, traffic, noise, pollution, construction conspire to make living hell. It seems more apocalyptically negative now than it did while watching it.

Into The Woods No More
Sepia-toned segment where a hunter keeps annoying a farmer, who thinks a nearby picnicking couple is to blame for his troubles.