Unlucky Pierre

The Suitor is a sight-gag souffle--tasty, fluffy and French. Screenwriter, director and star, all in one, is diminutive Pierre Etaix, who manages to combine the wobbly wistfulness of Chaplin, the deadpan pantomiming of Buster Keaton, and the jumping-jack gymnastics of Harold Lloyd.

Although he is well into his 30s, Pierre spends all his time in his room studying the astronomical charts that cover the walls and furniture. His preoccupation vexes Maman and Papa, who want him to get married. It also vexes like, the Swedish maid, but since she can speak no French (even her subtitles come out in Swedish), she can do nothing about it but look beautiful. One day Papa has a talk with Pierre--or thinks he does. But Pierre has his earplugs in, and the whole sound track is blanked out. Papa is seen enthusiastically drawing female forms in the air, cuddling imaginary infants in his arms, all the while chattering inaudibly. When Pierre finally unplugs his ears, it is only to hear Papa saying: ". And therefore I think you should get married immediately." Pierre ponders. He studies a girlie picture printed on the back of one of his charts. All of a sudden, out go the maps, diagrams and books, and out goes Pierre to chase the girls.

Clad in a snappy suit, Pierre hits the boulevard. He offers to carry a pretty girl's parcels, and they turn out to belong to a fat woman walking behind her. He crashes through the bushes in the park to give a lump of sugar to a poodle on a leash, discovers that the leash holder is walking a baby, not a dog. He prances up behind a sports car to doff his hat to a long-haired blonde in the front seat, only to find that she is an Afghan hound, not a mademoiselle. In a nightclub he sets off a chain reaction when he borrows a cigarette lighter from a girl, discovers it is a lipstick, puts it down on an ashtray; the man at the next table thinks it is a cigar, gets lipstick on his mouth, is slapped by his girl friend, etc.

Trying determinedly to be a masher, Pierre spies a lone lady at a table, gallantly grabs her bill as the waiter presents it, discovers that it includes a lavish dinner for two and many bottles of champagne. Hooked, he sticks around and pays and pays as the girl, already tanked up, orders more champagne, a purseful of cigarettes and a corsage. When he takes her home, she passes out in the foyer. He lugs his hefty pickup up and down stairs and in and out of an antique glass-walled elevator in a frantic attempt to find her apartment so he can unload her. When he finally gets rid of her and back on the street, he is missing a shoe, goes hippety-hoppety down the avenue at dawn, wondering if girls are worth the effort.

Before eventually deciding that they are, Pierre sends Maman and Papa into a new spell of vexation by redecorating his room with a thousand pinup photos of statuesque Stella, a chanteuse he sees on television. A bigger-than-life cutout of Stella covers a tall chest of drawers. As a matter of fact, Stella's chest covers one of the drawers, and every time Pierre opens it, he adds spectacular new dimensions to Stella's bosom.

The Suitor is a crazy little film, crammed with Dadaist episodes and droll vignettes. Much of it has a silent-movie look, almost as if it had been made at the old Hal Roach studios under the direction of a zany genius.

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