Ray Charles sings, a trombone swinging mid-tempo, Jerry Lewis Albert in clown costume with tiny melon around behind the flap 31/3 of his film “The Day The Clown Cried” , It can be cut off the cigarette, then a finger juggling, oafish, one suspects the laughter of the crew. With these scenes that took place in Stockholm or Paris 44 years ago, the NDR-documentary “The Clown” by Eric Friedler begins.
It is the last time in the next 155 minutes, that Lewis is funny in the role of the German clown Helmut Dork. Ravishing the comedian is a young, incredibly agile tap dancer with his partner Dean Martin; he’s the cool comedy star with Dick Cavett, as he’s lying pie in the sky stage. How great was the Clown film, he says, the butt as rooted in his right hand, as he had already buried the film and sank deeper and deeper into depression.
four minutes takes this overture to “The Clown”. At the end of the last great mysteries of film history is promised: searching unseen after, lost film “The Day The Clown Died”. What follows is one of the greatest deceptions that can give his hero a documentary film maker. For Fiedler attracts the viewer on a treasure hunt, which opens after many adventures into space, because the gold of the treasure is fool’s gold, the treasure a scrap: Jerry Lewis’ unfinished film from 1972 about a clown who comforts in KZ children until it with goes them into gas, has failed completely after his own confession.
“I failed,” the old man familiar brutally open at the German filmmaker. He had failed as a writer, director, star and producer, he says, tapping four times hard on the chest. It is the great achievement Eric Fiedler, the triumph behind the failure to bring to light:. Maybe it’s Jerry Lewis’ greatest achievement as an artist to make a poor job disappear rather than be expected and its audience
witness to witness, six of his Swedish actor of that time, colleagues, friends quarrel. They play touching scenes of the time after, and they misunderstand all. The great comedian Jerry Lewis has kept 44 years ago in front of a hubris that his reputation and his career could actually destroy.
“Shoah” -Meisterregisseur Claude Lanzmann, 90 years old, uses a brief appearance at the lucid judgment: “Jerry Lewis is intelligent He looked in time. that he was wrong in his film. He had probably underestimated the dangers. Morally he made the only right decision. ” Friedler cuts Lewis himself against it, who agrees Lanzmann: “. I underestimated the danger and was confused – I just could not manage”
Jerry Lewis was ashamed terribly
fully then stripped the US comedian Harry Shearer, who claims to have seen a portion of the raw material of “The Day The Clown Cried,” the myth of his mystery: “Jerry Lewis is simply nowhere funny; it would be grotesque to call the film a comedy “. To break the last legend, a masterpiece will the audience deprived, Lewis told on admirably honest, “I am determined twenty collapsed while filming, I felt just so close that ‘comedy’ was impossible Somewhere is the comedy. even if one carries 65 children to the gas chambers. But I slipped from the actual idea of the film. ”
A last he explains elsewhere: “Every morning I woke up with a heavy heart You must be happy to be funny can..” Eventually, he could no longer bear it and fled with the last wacky scenes to Los Angeles. Why? He was ashamed terribly.
It’s strange how insistently to recognize the protagonist in “The Clown” refuse that Lewis himself and them to the greatest possible pleasure with the waiver publication did. “It’s like a novel manuscript to lose,” groans Jean-Jacques Beineix (69), then during the filming in Paris Lewis’ assistant director, “it’s the worst thing that can a Director happen: How to stand trial, and never an opinion hear. The whole thing is a tragedy. ”
It is true that Jerry Lewis plunged into a deep creative crisis when his clown was stillborn. But that does not change the fact that he only did the right and decent. Already in previous years, his films had run no longer good, the comedy Superstar, which some had anointed “The Nutty Professor” (1963) to the legitimate heirs of Charlie Chaplin by and who was his own man as an author, director and actor, appeared his touch to have lost.
The fact that the Holocaust of the Jews Lewis, born Joseph Levitch tormented, and challenged as an artist, honors him. Obviously, he was ahead of his time in the film business; six years later brought the US television series “Holocaust” The Destruction of the European Jews in America literally living room.
Until Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning tragicomedy “Life Is Beautiful” (1998) was able to turn, had to pass 26 years. 1972 Jerry Lewis and his audience were not ripe for the Holocaust and comedy. Lewis earned an Oscar for Grandezza, resist vanity and financial pressure on the film to do without.
Perhaps no conscience
It is one of the deeply moving moments in” The Clown “, as the old Jerry Lewis, leaning with bare feet in house slippers, in color impossible pensioners divide, in a director chair in Las Vegas, Roberto Benigni praises simultaneously and condemned” Benigni has stolen me the idea, “he says in flashes of anger,” but he did it well. He did not act properly, but it’s a wonderful film, and he’s a very, very good comedian. ” So generous are true masters. his
Mag that Jerry Lewis behind his artistic failure hides a business failure. As the producer Nat Wachberger down made him condemn the witness in “The Clown” as complying incompetent, unprofessional villains turned out that the film rights were no longer on the fabric at Wachberger. He had an option not renewed. Jerry Lewis’ attempt to buy the rights directly from the author of the first script failed. After a demonstration of the first draft, they summoned the Star, which was contrary to her wishes.
For the love was hatred
It could be that the waiver to complete the film, through sloppy business practices was enforced before Lewis admitted his failure. It does not change his courage to take it all on yourself. His love for the book have been transformed into hatred eventually admits Lewis. Anyway, it was probably a blessing.
How did Eric Friedler, the old hero, who turns 90 years old on March 16, after to move decades long legendary refusal to speak, is the ultimate mystery of the unseen film “The Day The Clown Cried”. One must not ventilate.
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