From Darkness to Light – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

From Dark­ness to Light – first-look review

01 Sep 2024

Words by Ed Gibbs

Elderly man in striped clothing seated at a director's chair with "Jerry Lewis" text on it.
Elderly man in striped clothing seated at a director's chair with "Jerry Lewis" text on it.
The true sto­ry behind Jer­ry Lewis’ myth­i­cal, unseen fias­co, The Day the Clown Cried, is final­ly revealed, with the King of Com­e­dy him­self weigh­ing in.

Back in 1972, Jer­ry Lewis’ schtick, if not his star, was los­ing its sparkle in the US. Audi­ences had had enough of The Nut­ty Pro­fes­sor – or at least, the slew of not-dis­sim­i­lar Lewis-star­ring movies that had fol­lowed in its wake. Bereft of his long­time comedic part­ner Dean Mar­tin, Lewis – the orig­i­nal mul­ti-hyphen­ate –knew he had to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. What he opt­ed for would stop every­one in their tracks.

Ten years had passed since he had optioned the screen­play for The Day the Clown Cried, about a Ger­man clown who must enter­tain kids before they are sent down to the Nazi gas cham­bers. As he admits here, as a proud Jew him­self, he thought it was time to try his hand at some­thing like this, a seri­ous dra­ma, or at least a part with seri­ous dra­mat­ic over­tones. Direct­ing him­self play­ing a clown sound­ed like stan­dard Lewis fare. Shoot­ing in Swe­den and France, where he was wor­shipped as a mas­ter of the avant-garde, wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. He even declared on Dick Cavett’s US chat show that the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val was expec­tant­ly wait­ing for a cut to world pre­mière there.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as this doc reveals in painful detail, Lewis’ option on the orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al had lapsed by the time shoot­ing had com­menced – and none of the pro­duc­ers had both­ered to check or nego­ti­ate a renew­al. A dif­fi­cult shoot, with a cast ill-equipped to play Nazi offi­cers, left Lewis drained. When one of the pro­duc­ers played up, and the mon­ey stopped, pan­ic set in. Even a mad dash by Lewis per­son­al­ly, beg­ging to renew the rights with its author, proved a disaster.

In a major coup, the doc blends res­cued footage of the orig­i­nal film with reveal­ing, con­tem­po­rary insight with the sur­viv­ing cast and crew – as well as Lewis sup­port­ers like Scors­ese, Lewis him­self (inter­viewed a year before his death) and Har­ry Shear­er (one of the few to have watched a rough cut of the film, illic­it­ly on VHS). Lewis was inter­viewed by French jour­nal­ists about the project at the time of pro­duc­tion as well, which makes for an intrigu­ing look at the man and his process. It’s osten­si­bly a film about a flawed artis­tic vision – or is it? Lewis is hard on him­self (claim­ing the film wasn’t good enough to fin­ish). Oth­ers point to Rober­to Benig­ni jump­ing over chairs at the Oscars, to pick up his stat­uette for Life is Beau­ti­ful some 15 years lat­er, as proof that Lewis was sim­ply ahead of his time. Then, there’s Mel Brooks, a sea­soned pro at pok­ing fun at the Nazis, who points out that there’s noth­ing remote­ly fun­ny about the Holo­caust, no mat­ter how you try and frame it.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Lewis him­self, who admits to being haunt­ed by the project for the rest of his days, still believed one could find com­e­dy in any­thing if you looked hard enough. It’s dif­fi­cult to buy into that here. But the doc does make the case for the unfin­ished film to be screened in some way, if noth­ing else for Lewis’ own nuanced per­for­mance. Had he made his film in 1997, he may have wound up on that Acad­e­my Award stage after all.

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