Ray Charles sings, a trumpet 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 the cigarette cut, 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 German clowns Helmut Dork. Ravishing the comedian is a young, incredibly agile tap dancer with his partner Dean Martin; He is the cool comedy star with Dick Cavett, as he lies pie in the sky stage. How great is the Clown film, he says, the fag how firmly grown in the right, as he had already buried the film and sank deeper and deeper into depression.
No four minutes takes this overture to “The Clown”. At the end of the last great mysteries of film history are promised: the search unseen after, lost film “The Day The Clown Died”. What follows is one of the greatest deceptions that can give his hero a documentary. Because 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 to 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 have a bad 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 time after, and they misunderstand all. The great comedian Jerry Lewis has kept 44 years ago before a hubris that his reputation and his career really could destroy it.
“Shoah” -Meisterregisseur Claude Lanzmann, 90 years old, uses a brief appearance at the lucid judgment: “Jerry Lewis is intelligent He saw time. that he was wrong with his film. he had probably underestimated the dangers. Morally, he made the only right decision. ” Friedler cuts Lewis himself, however, who agrees Lanzmann: “. I underestimated the danger and was confused – I have it just could not”
Jerry Lewis ashamed terribly
fully then stripped of US comedian Harry Shearer, who claims to have seen a part 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 withheld, Lewis told in admirably honest: “I am determined twenty collapsed during filming, I felt just so close that ‘comedy’ was impossible Somewhere is the comedy. even if one takes 65 children to the gas chambers. But I slipped the actual idea of the film. ”
A Last he explains elsewhere: “Every morning I woke up with a heavy heart you have to be happy, to be funny can..” Eventually, he could no longer bear it and fled with the latest wacky scenes to Los Angeles. Why? He was ashamed appalling.
It is strange how tenaciously to recognize the protagonist in “The Clown” refuse that Lewis himself and them to the greatest possible favor by renouncing 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 is 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 the fact remains 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 heir 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 the Jews Lewis, born as Joseph Levitch tormented, and challenged as an artist, honors him. He obviously had his day in advance movie business; six years later brought the US television series “Holocaust” the destruction of European Jewry literally in America’s living room.
Until Roberto Benigni’s Oscar-winning tragicomedy “Life is Beautiful” (1998) was able to turn, would pass 26 years. 1972 Jerry Lewis and his audience were not ripe for the Shoah and humor. 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 gave me the idea stolen, “he says in flashes of anger,” but he did it well. he did not act properly, but it’s a wonderful film, and he is a very, very good comedian. ” So generous are true masters. be
Mag that Jerry Lewis behind his artistic failure hides a business failure. As the producer Nat Wachberger down let 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 ideas.
For the love was hate
It could be that the waiver to complete the film, by sloppy business practices was enforced before Lewis admitted his failure. It does not change his courage to take everything on himself. His love for the book have been transformed eventually into hatred, admits Lewis. Anyway, it was probably a blessing.
How did Eric Friedler, the old hero who turns 90 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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