It's the hottest thing in contemporary cinema -- after superhero movies and pirate movies, that is! I refer, of course, to movies about clowns in Nazi concentration camps! Who doesn't adore that genre? Let's see, there's Jerry Lewis's infamous, unreleased "The Day the Clown Cried" (wince), Robin Williams in "Jakob the Liar" (cringe), and Robert Benigni's cuddly and zany, Oscar-winning "Life is Beautiful" (projectile vomit). Holocaust hilarity ensues! Now The Guardian reports, in an item with a fantastic headline ("Schrader to direct death camp clown tale" -- sounds like a great name for a Northwest band) that Paul Schrader will direct Jeff Goldblum in an adaptation of Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk's novel "Adam Resurrected," about a clown who entertains Jews on their way to the gas chambers. Actually, Schrader (writer of "Taxi Driver" and "The Last Temptation of Christ," director of "American Gigolo," "Mishima," and "Light Sleeper," among many others) may have exactly the right sensibility for this project because he has virtually no sense of humor. In this case, that would likely be an asset.
A notorious 1989 Spy magazine article about Lewis's legally locked-up death-camp slapstick project quoted Harry Shearer, one of the few who has actually seen a cut of "The Day the Clown Cried":
With most of these kinds of things, you find that the anticipation, or the concept, is better than the thing itself. But seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. "Oh My God!"—that's all you can say.The original writers, according to a Wikipedia entry, will never allow the film to be released "in part due to changes in the script made by Lewis which made the clown more sympathetic and Emmett Kelly-like." (You can read the script yourself here.) Well, it could have been worse. Lewis could have made the character more Robin Williams-like or Roberto Benigni-like....
What do you think about Clowns and Nazis? Has anybody made it work? If so, how? Is it a good idea to play the Holocaust for sentimental humor, as opposed to, say, satirical humor -- as in Lubitsch's "To Be or Not To Be" -- made while the war was still raging, and the outcome uncertain, in 1942? (Now that was a gutsy movie.
Poor Jeff
I'm sorry, but there's a part of me that really wants to see that movie.
Also, the line about about Schrader being perfect because he has absolutely no sense of humor was a good one -- and fitting.
Perhaps just as disturbingly out of place as a Holocaust clown movie is this bit of information from The Guardian:
"Not even the prospect of a new computer game based on Taxi Driver seems to upset him. After Sony announced plans for "a total entertainment experience", he and Scorsese scrambled unsuccessfully to have the project stopped in its tracks."
I wonder if you can unlock an Easter Egg by blowing the pimp's hand off with one shot.
JE: I absolutely want to see Schrader's movie. And Lewis's. The other two I've seen, and can do without. But I believe Schrader and Jerry Lewis know how to approach this kind of material with daring and commitment, at least. Not placating platitudes like Williams and Benigni.
What do you think of Chaplin's "The Great Dictator"? Does it belong in the Clown + Nazis genre?
JE: I don't know about that. "The Great Dictator" is more like an editorial cartoon, with Chaplin was parodying Hitler. (He had to address the resemblance, and that moustache, somehow!) Now, if he'd put the Little Tramp in a concentration camp, that would have been something else altogether. Come to think of it, it might have been "Life is Beautiful." I shudder to think of it. Sentimentalizing the Holocaust just doesn't make sense. That's why I think Schrader may actually be able to pull this off. He's not sentimental, or funny.
BTW, the best Holocaust movie I've seen may be the Hungarian film that came out last year, "Fateless." It wasn't very funny. But it did something remarkable in that it helped you understand why some survivors may even have found moments of happiness in a hellish environment.
It's an interesting thought: are clowns in concentration camps worth even attempting after such debacles. The only way I believe it could be done is to have someone who either was a clown or is a clown being asked to be brought in by the Nazi officers to make the handling of the kids easier, and when the clown realizes what's happening the fun becomes more serious - though hardly sentimental. What would be even more interesting is if that clown was a German who's views were challenged when found in that position. I never saw "Jakob the Liar", and I don't believe I will, after witnessing "Life is Beautiful."
JE: "Jakob the Liar" isn't, of course, literally about a "clown" -- but it is about Robin Williams making up "good news" broadcasts ("Gooooooood Morning, Buchenwaaaaald!") to keep spirits up in the concentration camp. I've never been able to watch the whole thing, because Williams Chaplinesque appeals for love and pity are just too excruciating to witness.
I think the only way to handle a holocaust comedy would be to make a black comedy, Dr. Strangelove-style. The problem with Jakob the Liar and Life is Beautiful is that they were maudlin comedies. The situation is simply too bleak to handle sentimentality in a comedy. In a holocaust drama, maybe, but not in a comedy. You would have to be cynical in order to be funny.
Follwing your links I read the scripts, (both the earlier draft, and the supposed final shooting draft.)
Combining the two slightly different versions brought me to the conclusion that the original concept of the film is not really sentimental at all.
However, in order to acheive the desired redemption-amidst-horror that the story is aiming for, you must start with the idea that Helmut Doork, (the clown,) is a miserable, alchoholic jerk, who can't keep his mouth shut. He weasels and lies, but keeps finding himself in more horrific circumstances. Apparently, Lewis changed this concept, and made the clown more sympathetic.
The ending is not half as sentimental as all that is written about it would suggest.
The two endings in the scripts available differ slightly on the surface, but immeasurably in the effect. One draft is a dark, horrific ending, ramming home the pain, but allowing us to see the redemption of the character. The other heads straight for the tear ducts as a strategy of pure sentimentality.
Also, according to accounts I read of the ending that was ACTUALLY filmed, Lewis took the film completely towards the tear-jerker territory.
I think the concept is much more sound than Life is Beautiful.
All that being said, I think I agree with Jim. You perhaps need a humorless director to pull this off.
JE: Yes, that's what upset the writers of the original script, that Lewis made changes that put a more sentimental spin on the clown's character. Prettifying or sentimentalizing the Holocaust just doesn't seem like a worthwhile approach to me.
I'll never quite understand all the Life is Beautiful hate out there. I'm as allergic to Italian sentimentality as the next guy (I actually do sincerely hate the much loved Cinema Paradiso) and came in to the movie pretty much dreading the experience -- though already a bit perplexed at the level of vituperation the movie attracted.
While it was certainly a heart-on-its-sleeve film, I actually felt it earned its moments of feelings. I was also, pretty much reduced to a wet spot on the floor.
I tend not to be an easy mark, but perhaps we all have our weak spots. Or perhaps people are just understandably alarmed by the whole concept of any sort of humor at all in this setting.
In my case, the moment I realized I was going to have speak up for the movie, was when the main character's favorite opera piece was played over the concentration camp's sound system. Was that a cheap device? I don't know. Maybe I should see it again. (Which I'll admit is not a thought I relish.)
All I know, I was weeping more than practically any other movie I've even seen, and I don't even like opera much.
JE: Sounds like you were, in a way, primed to be as receptive as possible to the movie, Bob. You went in with low expectations, already skeptical about "the level of vituperation" you'd heard in response to the movie. Ask George W. Bush: Lowered expectations can do wonders in creating mildly favorable impressions! But I must say, if you hated "Cinema Paradiso," surely you can understand why people would hate "Life is Beautiful," because there are sentimental similarities.
I think, in movies like this, you reach a certain point where you either decide to go with it, or withdraw in revusion. I don't recall exactly when I reached the latter point in "Life in Beautiful," but I know it began with Benigni's mawkish performance, a case of Robin Williams Syndrome at its worst. What I found appalling wasn't so much the way Benigni trivialized the Holocaust (though that was pretty despicable, pretending you could just ignore it when you were in a concentration camp), but the self-aggrandizing portrayal of a man who does all this because, he thinks, it's best for his kid. Nonsense. It's really just a portrait of an insane man with a martyr complex bucking for sainthood. What he does is worse than child abuse -- he takes away the kid's ability to survive in a dangerous and hostile situation. The movie is so stupid when it comes to kids -- because it tries to portray Benigni's character as the child.
But kids don't understand death the way adults do, and that's why I think "Life is Beautiful" is such a failure: It doesn't understand the imagination and resiliency of children in the face of reality, as they apprehend it. (Think of fairy tales, with children who get eaten and witches pushed into ovens... Kids aren't bothered by that kind of stuff the way adults are, because they see it in a very different way.) What I think makes the movie not just bad but immoral is that it says this guy is some kind of "hero" by protecting his kid from real-world dangers. I remember thinking that, if you were to adopt Benigni's strategy, you'd say: "I'm just going to tell my kid that a busy street is really just a wonderful dodgeball playground -- but with cars!" Sure, adults have a strong impulse to protect their children from the harsh realities of the world. But part of growing up -- for parents, as well as for kids -- is learning that you can't. You have to do your best to prepare them.
Hi. I just want to say that this film is based on a famous book by a Jewish author and that it is NOT, repeat NOT, a comedy, a tragicomedy, or a cheezy life-affirming drama of any sort. It is a dark, extremely disburbing story of a man driven insane by the terrible things he was forced to do in the concentration camps (not just distracting the prisoners but doing other humiliating things to please the Nazi officers) to survive. He's in a mental institution in Israel and gets flashbacks of what happened, and not only is he lost in madness but tortured by guilt (his wife and daughters died in the camps too.) He eventually bonds with the other patients, and is somehow able to make sense of his life and move on.
I read the introduction to the book as well as many reviews on it, and am planning to read the whole thing. Trust me, this film is NOT going to be Jakob the Liar, Life is Beautiful or, G-d forbid, the Day the Clown Cried. It's going to be extremely intense, probably close to, if not on par with Schindler's list. And to top it off, it's told mostly from the inside of this man's mind.
So this is not "The Piano" or "Jakob the Liar" or anything like that. Think "A Beautiful Mind" meets "Schindler's List" and you've got an inkling.
Sorry, don't mean to be preachy, it's just that I really think the Holocaust needs to be addressed in film (so that we never forget.) Plus, I think Jeff Goldblum is about one hundred thousand times more talented than Tom Cruise or any other "leading man" Hollywood has been digging up lately. Bravo Jeff! :)