*I'm afraid I can't avoid spoilers in this review.

I was rather surprised there were no comments posted on this movie. Not many people seem to have seen "Yoyo" nowadays. It is a pity, as I find it a significant one, working on many levels. The director, Pierre Étaix, obviously fancied circus as an art form, but he really kept the circus performances to the minimum in this movie. The movie concentrates on the things the life as a touring circus artist represents; Simple, but free way of living.

The movie shows us the development from silent movies to the television era. The first half an hour is silent apart from special sound effects. In my opinion, this is the best part of the movie. It makes fun of the life of the materially fortunate, and some of the scenes are absolutely hilarious, with a whole bunch of servants pretending to take their jobs seriously and their master pretending to enjoy his pointless life.

The second part of the movie is no longer silent. It concentrates on Yoyo, the son of the rich man of the first part. Yoyo has spent his childhood in a circus group. He unfortunately sees only the glamor of his father's life and ends up searching happiness from wealth and materia. In the third part, in the television era, we see Yoyo's disappointment to the conventional life of the upper class. The circle of life has been completed, as the son has repeated his father's mistakes and ended up in the situation his father was in at the start of the movie. The simple but emotional (sad) story and the development of movie as an art form, already form an interesting and meaningful entity. But there is more to this movie.

The pace of the movie is quite fast, but what really keep the spectator focused are the ubiquitous gags. Nothing really spectacular is seen, but the number and the good taste of the jokes create a warm and amusing atmosphere. Both sad and funny, both light and meaningful, "Yoyo" is a movie for everyone. I'd say the only real problem is the slight loss of integrity towards the end of the film. "Yoyo" definitely deserves more attention.

I'm 47. It's genius. I have no other words, to say them would be a disservice.

OK my review didn't pass the quantity test: I have to write more lines otherwise I can't submit this.

Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood" has burnt indelible images into my mind, so did this film.

This film also bought me joy. It's very beautiful, very very funny and at times very sad.

It's highly stylised throughout, each period of the story is depicted through the cinema conventions of that period (somewhat). The stylisation continues through highly over-exaggerated but incredibly musical sound design and almost no dialogue.

The cinematography is stunning, the direction and editing are stunning, the performances are excellent throughout.

I may be alone in thinking that this is one of the greatest films but please make your own judgement, I'm happy.

The films of Pierre Etaix are pretty much unknown today, having been tied up in a legal dispute for decades. It was finally resolved in 2007, and they've been restored and reintroduced within the last few years (Criterion's nice box set was released in 2013). Yoyo is perhaps the best regarded of them. It is a fine French comedy. Somewhat reminiscent of Tati, but it has its own charms. Etaix stars. At first he plays a lonely rich man in 1925 (it opens as a silent film),who uses his extravagant wealth to distract himself from missing his true love (Claudine Auger),a circus performer. She returns with his clown son, Yoyo, in tow. After the stock market crash, Etaix joins his girl and their son in the circus act. The film soon skips ahead to WWII, where Yoyo, now an adult clown (also played by Etaix) entertains troops and hopes for better times. The plot on this one is very loose, and the comedy's not always laugh-out-loud funny, but it is very amusing and entertaining throughout. It's also quite lovely at times. It seems that this Etaix person is an actual discovery.