Lost in Criterion

Our third and final week in the Pierre Etaix boxset brings us the final two movies Etaix directed. The narrative film Le grand amour (1969) is perhaps the most entertaining (and self-aware) director-going-through-a-divorce movie we've ever seen. The documentary Land of Milk and Honey (1971) belongs to our favorite genre of documentary: director hired to make a puff piece turns in an artistic final product that his producers despise (see also Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad (1965)). Unfortunately, it wasn't just the producers that hated Milk and Honey, and Etaix never directed again.