This movie is famous for lots of reasons. In case you didn't know "The Day the Clown Cried" Is a movie that was never released. There lots of explanations why it wasn't however now after almost 40 years after being shot the movie is still a major curiosity among movie fans (and fans of Jerry Lewis) on why it wasn't. The story all by itself sounds like a big What The Fuck.
Jerry Lewis plays a clown (remember this is the man who does that telethon for his kids each year) who takes childern well here is the plot as taken from wikipeia
Lewis plays a depressed, formerly great German circus
clown named Helmut Dorque (pronounced 'Dork') during the beginning of
World War Two and
Holocaust. Although he was once a famous performer with the
Ringling Brothers, Dorque is now past his prime and has little-to-no respect in the circus. After getting demoted for causing an accidental mishap during one performance, he shares his problems with his wife, who advises him to stand up for himself. Before he can summon the courage to defend himself and confront his antagonists, he overhears the lead clown Gustav telling the ringmaster to fire Helmut, or else he will resign, to which the showman reluctantly agrees. Distraught, Helmut is caught in a bar by the
Gestapo for ranting about Germany and drunkenly mocking the
Führer. After an interrogation at the Gestapo headquarters, he is imprisoned in a
Nazi camp for
political prisoners. For the next three to four years, he remains there while hoping for a trial and a chance to plead his case.
He tries to keep his bravado up among the other inmates by bragging what a famous performer he once was. His only friend in prison is a good-hearted German named Johann Keltner, whose reason for being interned is never fully revealed but most likely due to being an outspoken reverend towards the Nazis. The others goad him into performing for them, but he does not, realizing that he is, in fact, terrible. Frustrated, they beat him up and leave him in the courtyard to sulk about his predicament. Suddenly, he sees a group of
Jewish children laughing at him from the other side of the camp, where the Jewish prisoners are being kept away from everyone else. Feeling delighted to be appreciated again, Helmut performs for them and gains quite an audience for a while, until the new prison
commandant orders that he must be stopped.
After the
SS guards break up his latest performance, they knock him out cold and start beating the children away from the barbed-wire fence. Horrified at what they are doing to children, Keltner defeats a guard in a fight, but he is quickly killed by receiving several blows to the head. Helmut, meanwhile, is placed alone in solitary confinement. Seeing a use for him, the commandant assigns him to help load Jewish children on trains leading out of the internment camp with the promise of a review of his case. By a twist of fate, he ends up accidentally accompanying the children on a boxcar train to
Auschwitz, and he is eventually used, in almost
Pied Piper fashion, to help lead Jewish children to their deaths in the
gas chamber.
Offered his freedom if he fulfills this request, Helmut reluctantly obliges to do so. Leading them to the "showers," he becomes increasingly dependent on a miracle, only to learn there is none. After all the children go into the chamber, he is so filled with remorse for what he has done that he goes into the room himself to entertain them. The probable reason why he does this is that he wished to take back all the bad things he had done, but according to one of the few that have seen the film, it may have been for his own
ego. As the children laugh while he performs, every one of them dies quietly of the effects of
Zyklon B.
Well to me this movie sounds like Jerry Lewis had an ego trip and thought he could win that Academy Award but give me a break. The movie should of never been made.
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