As Long As You've Got Your Health (1966)

AS LONG AS YOU'VE GOT YOUR HEALTH 
    D: Pierre Étaix                               (1966)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    Pierre Étaix, Denise Peronne,
    Simone Fonder, Sabine Sun
A compilation of four comic sketches, each starting with some simple activity and moving on to practically anywhere. One begins with a man in bed reading a book. Another involves a trip to the movies. In the third, some jackhammers pound away at a city street. In the last, a man drives a post into the ground to fix a wire fence. This is where Jacques Tati meets Ernie Kovacs. Étaix is practically unknown in the United States, and his films were tied up for years in legal disputes over ownership and distribution rights. His humor is mostly visual, and his movies play by their own cracked rules, in a universe where, of course, if a sheet of music gets knocked around enough, the notes will just naturally start to drop off the page. The films are hard to describe, really. You've just got to see them. And it's probably no coincidence that the guy in episode four trying to repair the wire fence is dressed like Buster Keaton.