The Last Laugh: Strange Humors of Cinema

Jerry Made His Day

47 Jean-Michel Frodon Jerry Made His Day This text is about a film that for all intents and purposes does not exist. So what? We who love cinema have always been able to dream films as well as to watch them. Sometimes we dream them instead of watching them; sometimes we dream them while watching them. I often proudly acknowledge that I slept during all my favorite films, from Murnau to Weerasethakul, from Vigo to Van Sant. So if I can dream films that do exist, how could I not dream those that do not? This film, though notoriously written, produced, and, to a certain extent, shot and edited, not only was never completed, and therefore never publicly screened, but is supposed to have no official existence. So we are talking about a ghost film. Which is actually quite appropriate, considering the filmmaker’s subject. Jerry Lewis’s The Day the Clown Cried (1972) is actually a kind of dreamy movie—a nightmare, to be more specific. It tells the story of a German clown, Helmut Doork (Lewis), who finds himself accompanying Jewish children to the gas chamber in Auschwitz. Do I have to add that it is not a funny film? It’s actually one of the saddest films I ever saw, or dreamt. But it is, to a huge extent, a film about laughs, about being funny, about being professionally funny—an issue Joseph Levitch, better known as Jerry Lewis, knew something about in 1971 when he stepped aboard this project, having been a standing comedian, comedy actor, and director for already more than thirty years. 48 Jean-Michel Frodon If The Day the Clown Cried does not exist, its script does. It is even available on the Internet (www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the_day_the_ clown_cried.html). The film I’m writing about is actually very close to this script, except for the very beginning. In this script, one can read what could have become the tagline for the film: “When you rule by fear, laughter is the most frightening sound in the world.” This line is from Reverend Keltner, who is an inmate with Helmut. At this point in the film, we have seen how Helmut, the former number-one clown in Europe, has fallen in disgrace, becoming a stooge before being fired from the circus. Getting drunk to drown his despair, the clown insulted a portrait of Hitler (only then do we discover that the story is happening during this specific historical period), was arrested at once by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp for political prisoners. So far, Helmut cares only about his personal fate. Although he lives in Nazi Germany, he is interested in nothing other than the loss of his celebrity and the humiliation he undertakes from the circus director and the new leading clown. Separated from the rest of reality, including the tender love from his wife, he is unable to play by the rules. As an inmate, he claims to be a famous artist but refuses to talk to the others. Frustrated and bored, prisoners ask Helmut to entertain them, and since he refuses they become aggressive and even beat him to force him to make them laugh. (Thematically, this scene can be seen as a much darker version of Donald O’Connor’s gentle [and funny] hysteria as he performs “Make ’Em Laugh” to the limit of his strength and beyond, in Singin’ in the Rain [Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952].) Only Reverend Keltner stands on Helmut’s side and tries to protect him. Somewhat later, a new camp is opened, for Jewish children, on the other side of barbed wires. The political inmates are strictly forbidden to interact with the children but, as he performs (lousy) tricks under the menace of other inmates, it turns out that Helmut makes the children laugh. Stimulated by this response, the clown starts a complete act, achieving success with all his audiences: the Jewish children with their Stars of David, the political prisoners with their red triangles on their striped uniforms, and even the German guards in their miradors . But the Kommandant does not laugh. He brutally interrupts Helmut’s act. In a later scene, the clown and Keltner will be severely beaten by the SS, and another prisoner will be shot dead because he Jerry Made His Day 49 helped Helmut to perform for the children, breaking...