FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT
(director/writer: Eric Friedler/Michael Lurie; cinematographer: James Stolz; editors: Lamar R. Tupper/Thilo Heidermann-May; music: Alexander Precht; cast: Rune Ericson, Martin Scorsese, Pierre Etaix, Jerry Lewis, Harry Shearer, Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman; Runtime: 108; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Jeffrey Giles, Thore Vollert; TCM; 2024)
“The documentary filmmakers provide stunning details the public never knew before about this essential film.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Eric Friedler (“Aghet: A Genocide”/”It Must Swing: The Blue Note Story”) & Michael Lurie are co-directors and writers in their documentary of Jerry Lewis’s failed Holocaust film from 1971, The Day the Clown Cried. Friedler, after all these years, in 2017, shortly before the 91-year-old comedian died while back home in Las Vegas, sat down with Jerry and fully went into how he shot the film in France and Sweden. He explores how Jerry directed, wrote (re-writing the script from Joan O’Brien’s, one of the story’s original authors), starred and financed it. When nearly completed and set to play at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, Jerry mysteriously refused to release it and it became a lost film until located years after Jerry’s death in the Library of Congress.
We see throughout the documentary recovered footage from the clown movie. And, through Friedler’s candid lengthy interview with Jerry we learn about many of the problems the Holocaust comedy faced. We learn about the film’s irresponsible Swedish producer Nat Wachsberger (Lewis’s inept partner producer, who didn’t even secure the rights to the story). We also learn about Jerry’s dissatisfaction with his own creativity (calling it his greatest failure in his inability to make his Holocaust film funny-something the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni did in his 1997 Oscar-winning film Life is Beautiful).
There’s the remarkable sobering and torturous finale, where the Nazis used Jerry’s death camp clown Helmut Doork for his friendship with some 60+ Jewish children inmates and made the clown walk them calmly into the gas chambers as the pied piper without them realizing they were on a death march. This haunting scene sticks in Jerry’s memory as if it was for real.
The German guards were played by Swedes, something Jerry said didn’t work because their accents weren’t right. But it worked for me.
The documentary directors pull noteworthy interviews from other films into this film (like Jerry’s appearance on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show). They get great film commentary from the French director and actor Pierre Etaix, Martin Scorsese, Harry Shearer, and Mel Brooks. And, the documentary filmmakers provide stunning details the public never knew before about this essential film. The film might make you see how the American slapstick comedian had some depth and was such a legendary figure in France.
It played at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival.

REVIEWED ON 2/3/2025 GRADE: B+
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