The Day the Clown Cried (clown concentration camp film) to be screened?

[El Unicornio, mang]

I'm sorry but there's no way it could ever possibly have been considered a good idea. How did it ever, as Americans say, get off the ground? It's like Norman Wisdom making a film about Srebenica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heil_Honey_I%27m_Home!

Heil Honey I'm Home! is a British sitcom, written by Geoff Atkinson and produced in 1990, which was cancelled after one episode. It centres on Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who live next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein

I guess to a lesser degree 'Allo 'Allo seems like an awfully bad taste concept but somehow was massively popular for 9 seasons.

[sevendaughters]

Jerry Lewis was one of the few comedians who was imputed with a real sense of something 'more' when Cahiers du Cinema and auteur theory was finally getting disseminated beyond France and academia. Where many audiences saw just a clown, they saw a clown that held up a mirror to life. I daresay some of that garlanding rubbed off on him and gave him ideas beyond Who's Minding the Store? Also his prior film had a war theme - Which Way To The Front? - which bombed at home but did very well in France.

[lauraxsynthesis]

Don't know about Wisdom, but the Crazy Gang end up in a concentration camp in Gasbags. 1941 :(

20 minutes in that sequence starts. There's a bit when Bud (who is Jewish, fact fans) tells off an old fella in the camp for being a kapo.

[Bernice]

I'm sorry but there's no way it could ever possibly have been considered a good idea. How did it ever, as Americans say, get off the ground? It's like Norman Wisdom making a film about Srebenica

In the early 70's, how aware was a non-Jewish American audience aware of the holocaust? Beyond being vaguely aware that it had happened, I mean. Pre-Sophie's Choice, pre-Shoah, pre-Schindler's list. Nazis were the enemy in corny war films and schlocky exploitation where they're generally portrayed as the avatar of some vague geopolitical malignancy rather than the perpetrators of a specific evil. I can see how The Day the Clown Cried may have seemed a worthy project at some point in that climate. 25 years later fucking Life is Beautiful was an oscar-winning, global box office smash and nothing I've read about Clown makes it sound more offensive than that maudlin, self-aggrandizing pile of shit.

[Famous Mortimer]

In the early 70's, how aware was a non-Jewish American audience aware of the holocaust? Beyond being vaguely aware that it had happened, I mean. Pre-Sophie's Choice, pre-Shoah, pre-Schindler's list. Nazis were the enemy in corny war films and schlocky exploitation where they're generally portrayed as the avatar of some vague geopolitical malignancy rather than the perpetrators of a specific evil. I can see how The Day the Clown Cried may have seemed a worthy project at some point in that climate. 25 years later fucking Life is Beautiful was an oscar-winning, global box office smash and nothing I've read about Clown makes it sound more offensive than that maudlin, self-aggrandizing pile of shit.

There are other ways for people to be aware of things than through the medium of movies. For instance, the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics probably got a few people talking about relatively recent history.

[Blumf]

I guess to a lesser degree 'Allo 'Allo seems like an awfully bad taste concept but somehow was massively popular for 9 seasons.

It's quite impressive how they managed to dance around the unpleasantness of the situation. Even ignoring what the Germans were up to in the camps, the occupation could be very unpleasant in itself.

I heard the show was popular in France, not sure if that's true or not.

[Oh, Nobody]

So Lewis is named Helmut Doork and one of the kids is Willie? Who's the main nazi, Gruppenfuhrer Penis?

[Bernice]

There are other ways for people to be aware of things than through the medium of movies. For instance, the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics probably got a few people talking about relatively recent history.

Sure and the Eichmann trial had been big news a decade before - I guess "aware" is too mealy-mouthed a word from me. But I mean, even using the word "Holocaust" to denote this specific event wouldn't take hold until the late 70's, which feels like a general moment where ideas from academics/historians/survivors begin to cross over into the mainstream. It's not until 1985 that the first state, California, mandates the teaching of the Holocaust in public schools.

I guess what I'm getting at is that we have, now, some general shared understanding of what a depiction of the Holocaust should be, which seems to coalesce, rightly or wrongly, around the sort of things Schindler's List was praised for on its release (starkness, lack of sentimentality, a certain emotional distance without compromising on the specifics). But this didn't really exist in the early 70s so I can see, vaguely, why what seems like a hideous miscalculation now might have seemed a wise idea at the time (at least in the early stages of the project). Whereas Life is Beautiful, both the movie and its reception, seem far more baffling to me.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It's quite impressive how they managed to dance around the unpleasantness of the situation. Even ignoring what the Germans were up to in the camps, the occupation could be very unpleasant in itself.

I heard the show was popular in France, not sure if that's true or not.

I could believe it. The UK has had plenty of successful comedy (at the time and since) which deals with what the country went through during WWI and WWII. It's probably a bit of a tonic.

Also never knew this existed until now

[dontpaintyourteeth]

dressing up like a clown to highlight an atrocity

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

dressing up like a clown to highlight an atrocity

He doesn't actually dress up like a clown during the concentration camp scenes. A pedantic point, perhaps, but it's not like he's stomping around Auschwitz in full Ronald McDonald garb.

Although he does, admittedly, wear some sad clown make-up as he leads the kids into the gas chambers. So, y'know. Yeah.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

A pedantic point, perhaps,

yes

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

yes

I know. I was being pedantic for very mildly humorous effect.

[Mr Banlon]

It's quite impressive how they managed to dance around the unpleasantness of the situation. Even ignoring what the Germans were up to in the camps, the occupation could be very unpleasant in itself.

I heard the show was popular in France, not sure if that's true or not.

"A portrait made famous in the BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo has been sold for £15,000.

The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies, by fictional artist Van Clomp, was a running joke in the show, which ran between 1982 and 1992.

The infamous prop was previously sold in 2007 for £4,000 to a private buyer.

Auctioneer Andy Stowe, said the latest buyer was from Nouvion in France where the series was set so "it was going home".

[El Unicornio, mang]

Apparently they've never heard of it

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFrance/comments/rxoa8a/what_do_french_people_think_of_allo_allo/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I know. I was being pedantic for very mildly humorous effect.

my comment was merely a sarky reply to someone else's point, not a serious comment about a film I'll probably never see

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

my comment was merely a sarky reply to someone else's point, not a serious comment about a film I'll probably never see

Fair enough. Apologies for the confusion. Everything about this film inspires confusion.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Fair enough. Apologies for the confusion. Everything about this film inspires confusion.

Yes so much about it is just inexplicable isn't it. In a way I hope we never see it because I sort of enjoy that- it's more interesting to talk about than it could possibly be to watch, imo

[Terry Torpid]

I'm starting to think this film might not have been the best idea.

[PlanktonSideburns]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heil_Honey_I%27m_Home!

I guess to a lesser degree 'Allo 'Allo seems like an awfully bad taste concept but somehow was massively popular for 9 seasons.

Yea but 'Allo 'Allo handles the thorny issues with such subtlety and compassion

[idunnosomename]

A pedantic point, perhaps, but it's not like he's stomping around Auschwitz in full Ronald McDonald garb.

well perhaps he should have been

[Phoenix Lazarus]

well perhaps he should have been

It'd be a bit weird.  MacDonalds wasn't established till two years after this film was aborted, was it?

[Ferris]

I guess to a lesser degree 'Allo 'Allo seems like an awfully bad taste concept but somehow was massively popular for 9 seasons.

9 seasons!! Fucking hell.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Apparently they've never heard of it

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFrance/comments/rxoa8a/what_do_french_people_think_of_allo_allo/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

to be fair if I was French and had heard of it I reckon 'never heard of it mate' would be a pretty solid answer. If the thread wasn't locked I'd probably post it now.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

So Lewis is named Helmut Doork

He really, genuinely believed the film would still be taken as a serious drama?

[13 schoolyards]

The mix of being totally out of his mind on painkillers after a back injury and being worried his fanbase wouldn't follow him to a movie unlike anything he'd done in his lengthy career probably explains it

[Terry Torpid]

So Lewis is named Helmut Doork

He really, genuinely believed the film would still be taken as a serious drama?

That's the bit that confuses me. In the original script the character was called Karl Schmidt, a perfectly straight serious kind of name. When Lewis did his rewrites, he renamed the character, and it's such a jokey name. He sounds like a friend of Herr Lipp. I think a lot of the perception of the film as a comedy can be traced back to that one decisiom.

[The Bumlord]

Also never knew this existed until now

Fuck me that's shit.

[studpuppet]

9 seasons!! Fucking hell.

I know for a fact it's big in Bosnia:

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

It's like Norman Wisdom making a film about Srebenica

Not really. Lewis was an established director, one of yer actual auteurs, who was taken seriously by the Cahiers du Cinema crowd. I daresay some of that praise may have gone to his head, hence his probably unwise decision to make this film, but he's only comparable to Wisdom in the sense that they were both goofy slapstick comics with a sentimental streak.

As far as I'm aware, Wisdom never aspired to write and direct his own films, whereas Lewis definitely saw himself as an artiste, a filmmaker with total autonomy over his creative vision.

That, of course, is why most of his self-directed films are frustratingly uneven and self-indulgent, but they are at least distinctive, unusual and occasionally inspired.