Back in August, Richard brought us a glimpse of some fascinating behind-the-scenes footage from one of the most fascinating movie projects in the history of cinema, the movie that we may never see, yet must see, yet maybe it’s better if we continue imagining it and never see it at all! I refer of course to Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried, the 1972 movie about a clown in a Nazi concentration camp that Jerry has hidden away and swears will never be seen by anyone.
At the time, Richard urged people to watch the YouTube clip NOW, because it’ll be yanked before you know it. Five months later and the clip is still up ... perhaps a sign that Jerry’s ability or desire to keep this from people is abating? We can’t know.
What we do know is that a new clip has surfaced with additional behind-the-scenes footage! And it’s tasty indeed, we get an entire scene in the process of being filmed. Jerry’s working with French actors here, so his directorial word of approval is invariably “Bon.” We get a fascinating clip of Jerry in full clown makeup in the middle of an empty big top, looking down at a pile of ashes as “Taps” plays. We also get a minute or two of Jerry working with the orchestra.
It’s a weird clip, actually. The YouTube “About” information reads in part, “This is the remainder of the footage from the full documentary, you’ve already seen the rest.” I take this to mean that the clip Richard posted in August is “the rest,” and that this second clip now completes the documentary. This YouTube file, unlike the other one, isn’t actually the documentary as much as someone filming a computer monitor that is playing the documentary—you can see the computer monitor clearly throughout, especially in the beginning as someone adjusts the frame. The monitor even has visible fingerprints on it.
In the clip below, Jerry interacts with an interviewer in a hotel room in Paris, two weeks before the production of The Day the Clown Cried. The date is March 1972. Jerry discusses the choice of Cirque d’Hiver de Paris for the location of the all-important circus in the movie, the ten years he waited before he felt he was ready to shoot the movie, and the casting of the children in the movie, among many other subjects. He also discusses his use of video playback, which (as he says) he invented sixteen years earlier. His mention of the circus as the location for the first day of shooting leads me to believe that the footage in the other two documentary clips similarly comes from early in the shoot. Much of the movie was shot in Sweden.
Interestingly, this interview clip ends with Jerry lighting a cigarette off of a candle, which (they had NO way of knowing this) is reminiscent of a gag from the August footage in which Jerry’s clown is not able to light a cigarette because the flame keeps going out just as he needs it.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Holy shit holy grail: BTS footage from Jerry Lewis’ Nazis comedy ‘The Day the Clown Cried’ surfaces!