Jerry Lewis's “The Day the Clown Cried” discovered in Sweden after 53 years
84 comments
·May 30, 2025al_borland
dylan604
You can find old film reels from random places. I used to work at a film post house where people would bring us film they purchased without really knowing what it was. One person scored several features from an old broadcaster from when they would actually broadcast straight from the telecine. Some of these might be in the public domain now, but most were not. A lot of them reeked of vinegar and beyond saving.
happytoexplain
What is the minimum number of people you would expect any arbitrary person to screen a film for?? If he started with a handful and met a new one every couple years, that's "odd" to you? Why do you even have an internal concept of what that number should be?
al_borland
If the movie was really good (as implied by saying they people need to see it), I’d expect the initial batch to tell some friends, and then those people to tell some friends. Some organic growth at least in his local area where people are pushing him for more showing to show friends.
I don’t know what I was expected, but it was higher than 25 over 45 years.
Xss3
Organic growth? For inviting people into his home to watch a movie he obviously kept a secret?
abootstrapper
If he stole it, how does he have the right to sell it?
dylan604
he wouldn't. but eventually, it'll become part of the public domain. at that point, he could release his "work output" and own the copyright on that. that new work could be sold. i worked with someone that did this very thing of restoring copies of old films and released them on DVD
bawolff
In the us, unpublished works created before 1978 are copyrighted until 70 years after the death of the author (Sweeden might be different though).
So you might be waiting a long time.
> he could release his "work output" and own the copyright on that
Probably not in the united States, but other countries (i know UK at the very least) this would be true. The united states requires "creative decisions" to grant copyright. Work output by itself doesn't count.
You could still distribute it, you just couldn't copyright it.
antithesizer
At 25 people this guy probably has the largest social circle of anyone in Sweden.
IncreasePosts
The film is interesting due to its rarity, but most likely it's not a very good film. So the only people that you might screen into are people who are interested in film history or especially interested in Jerry Lewis
gwbas1c
Probably shows it to a small group of people, like 3-6, every 7-8 years.
TazeTSchnitzel
> I also find it odd that he's been screening it for friends since the 80s, yet has only shown it to 24 people.
He was terrified of the consequences of too many people finding out about the theft; a lot of those views were quite recent.
observationist
Maybe he's talking about the physical medium, and not the movie - a copy of the movie should be distributed, for sure, but the film (and the vhs tape) should be kept locked away, it's a piece of history.
al_borland
All original copies of all films should be properly archived. I agree with that. The fact that so many have been "lost" is why I don't think we should put our faith in these companies to be the archivists for these works.
reddalo
Call me a dreamer, but he should just make a good capture of the VHS and upload it to the Internet Archive.
rapidaneurism
But how can he sell that to 'worthy collector' ?
ilamont
he stole a complete workprint of the film from the archives of its production studio in 1980 – and has been screening it for guests in his apartment ever since.
Former 35mm projectionist here. I suspect there are a lot of old stashes like this. In our booth we had a gigantic reel of old 1960s and 1970s horror film trailers that previous projectionists had spliced together until there was no more space on the reel. We were not supposed to save trailers, but no one checked what we did with them after removing them from the film reels at the end of the run and returning those prints to the distributor.
On a quiet summer night, after the last showing had ended and the customers had left, we employees would sometimes lock the doors, get some snacks, and watch these old treasures from previous decades spool by.
The trailer reel included several versions of The Shining trailer, including one that had a slow-motion scene of blood pouring from the elevator that was waaaay longer than the clip in the movie (possibly from one of the alternate cameras, see https://geektyrant.com/news/the-story-behind-the-infamous-bl...). The reel also had some long-forgotten stinkers, including for the 1966 British horror film Psychopath which I only remember because the trailer featured an unusual song structured like a nursery rhyme that I can still partially recall.
A corporate chain took over (Lowes) and sometime in the early 1990s the theater was closed. The space is now a Staples. This illicit reel, if it wasn't thrown out during the closure, is probably in someone's basement. The only way to know the contents is to play it, which is hard to do as not many traditional 35mm projectors are still around or available for screening a 50-year-old reel that might be brittle, gunky, or otherwise damage the machine.
I've heard of similar stashes. For instance, around the same time, I had friends who worked in a photo shop. They had several binders of, um, special photos that they had copied from customers' negatives during the on-site development process.
I visited this basement lair once, which was dominated by a modern color processing machine. I remember flipping through one of the binders. It was very, very strange stuff, like something out of Blue Velvet.
_m_p
In this vein, people might be interested in reading about the Dawson City Film Find!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson_Film_Find
> In 1929, Clifford Thomson, then employed by the Canadian Bank of Commerce and also treasurer of the hockey association, solved the problem of the library's stock of film and the inadequate ice rink. Thomson took 500,000 feet of film and stacked the reels in the pool, covered the reels with boards and leveled the rink with a layer of earth. The DAAA continued to receive new nitrate films which would later fuel the destruction of the entire complex in a fire in 1951. The films stored under the ice rink were preserved by permafrost and were later uncovered in 1978 when a new recreation center was being built.
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JKCalhoun
Yeah, worked at a one-hour photo store when I was a teen. "Put the screen down" was the signal that some "amateur stuff" was about to come down the print out-feed (a kind of curtain/cover would hide the prints coming out from the general public). (Kind of wild that people's photos coming out of the machine was something of a feature the store made readily visible to the passersby in the mall where the One House Photo was located. Privacy, what?)
And though I wasn't one of the techs that made the prints, I do seem to recall they would spin off dupes for their own private collection(s).
Mistletoe
Yes I think I remember a time when you could see the Walmart photo center one hour prints just spool off the line and collect in a holder. Times were so different back then.
euroderf
When I saw a machine doing this - dropping the prints in full view of passers-by - I mentioned it to friends - be careful what you photograph.
dylan604
Were these old prints with an optical track, or was there a corresponding mag reel? Listening to optical audio is a bit of retro nostalgia in and of itself.
ilamont
Optical. AFAIK all commercial 35mm film prints used optical at that time (1960s-1980s).
I've used 16mm film with audio on separate magnetic tape, but my god was that a pain to deal with.
dylan604
That's what I assumed. One of the post facilities I worked in had multiple mag followers where the audio was recorded in 2 channel pairs before ultimately getting mixed down to the final mix that would be used to make that optical track on a release print. At some point, for the lulz, someone laid down a 5.1 mix to 3 separate 35mm mags just to playback in the theater. These would all sync to the projector, and would make all sorts of clunks and loud noises when they'd all start playing. these were all kept in sync with quartz crystals. it was the most steampunk thing I had ever seen. Mind you, this was in the early/mid 90s just after the first NLEs were coming out. So my mind was totally blown in how it used to be done.
ocschwar
The film appears to be "inspired" by the story of Janusz Kurchark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak
JKCalhoun
That was a rather horrible but also beautiful thing to read.
roskelld
I only read about this recently. Such a dark premise, which I could imagine being an incredibly powerful movie if shot well, but missing the mark by even an inch would likely just end up to be an offensive mess. I presumed this movie was a case of the latter.
alwa
> Other films that have not yet screened because of filmmaker stipulations include 100 Years starring John Malkovich. The short film is from 2015 but has been placed in time-locked safes that won’t open until 2115, 100 years after the film was made.
I wonder how one goes about engineering a "time-locked safe" such that it opens, reliably, only after 100 years...
mminer237
The most reliable way is to set up a trust & hire a big bank to hold it for 100 years in a deposit box.
burkaman
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Years_(film)
It's just an ad. I'd be willing to bet that there is nothing in the safe and the film is just a file in some corporate cloud that will be deleted in 10 years when everyone involved in the marketing stunt has moved on to other jobs.
AngryData
You could power a clock with a radioactive isotope and it could get you 100 years worth of power. With a big enough spring you could also theoretically get a small mechanical watch-like clockwork to last that long, however calibrating it to be accurate and not wear too much over such a long time span would be difficult.
timschmidt
Or just power or wind the clock externally. If it's [electro]mechanical, losing power or forgetting to wind it will only extend the period of time for which it remains closed. Otherwise it would need an internal backup battery, which, if it's only powering an extremely low power clock and nothing mechanical, could last that long with the right chemistry. Solar cells could also last a hundred years, suitably encased, with some reduction in effectiveness due to ionization.
andrewflnr
I'm reminded of those long gear reductions where the last gear is calculated to turn once every century or so. You'd need a lot of power to make that work here, at least the naive version of it.
autoexec
> "I want to sell it to a serious producer who either restores it or keeps it locked away"
It was arguments over money that caused the film to be "lost" in the first place. It's a shame that it's still all about money and greed could cause it to be lost again. The best thing to do would be to release it online for free so that everyone could see and learn from it. That way, if others want to restore it using modern methods they still can. I'd rather see it as it is anyway. Before the inevitable re-edited (perhaps even censored) AI "enhanced" version a "serious producer" would shit out and overcharge for.
reddalo
Yeah, I agree. He should release a high-quality capture of the VHS, without edits whatsoever. VHS quality also decays with time, so he better hurry up.
Hamuko
I thought the main point of this version is that it's edited to be an actual movie based on the script. The Library of Congress already has a bunch of original material with no edits.
daveFNbuck
If you think this is more important than the money it can be sold for, you should be the one to buy it.
mulmen
Exchanging money for something implies you believe it has a monetary value. That is the opposite of thinking something is too important to have a monetary value.
daveFNbuck
Spending money to ensure something is released online for free is not the opposite of thinking it should be released online for free though.
If think the owner should give up its monetary value to satisfy your beliefs, you should be willing to do the same.
aspenmayer
So you mean to say it’s priceless?
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iwanttocomment
The Europafilm staff dubbing The Day the Clown Cried was covered in From Darkness To Light, a documentary from last year about Jerry Lewis' The Day the Clown Cried which premiered on American TV back in August 2024. It's honestly surprising to me that this continues to make the news this year.
I-M-S
This was the topic of a recent episode of "Decoder Ring", a wonderful podcast that explores cultural mysteries: https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2025/02/on-the-lates...
qntmfred
also in a Joe Scott video last month
labrador
A post-divorce girlfriend of mine claims she lost her mind at a private screening that was held for her and some posh English friends. It sounded horrible.
duxup
> The film tells the story of a German circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for mocking Adolf Hitler and is then forced to lure children to their deaths as punishment.
How do you pitch that?
readthenotes1
1973: Nazi cosplayers had been marching in the streets of Chicago for years.
Nazi Germany and the Holocaust was a living memory for most adults, including Mr Lewis who was Jewish.
How do you help people remember? By showing the horror.
https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/November-2016/Chicago-N...
duxup
I think everything other than Nazis in general tied with it is the issue.
croes
How was „Life is beautiful“ pitched?
duxup
That seems dramatically different than the Lewis movie.
croes
Is it?
> In 1997, Italian director Roberto Benigni won Oscars for “Life is Beautiful,” about a father who uses humor to comfort his young son when they are imprisoned in a concentration camp. ”Benigni stole the idea from me, but he did it well,” Lewis adds.
https://qz.com/613084/jerry-lewis-has-broken-a-40-year-silen...
kujillo
[flagged]
gwervc
> How do you pitch that?
Using exactly the text you quoted. Since it's about Hitler, Nazi and camps the TV channel ARTE will fund it in a heartbeat. (The current top movie on arte.tv/fr/videos/cinema is "Lili Marleen, un chant d'amour dans l'Allemagne nazie)
neuroelectron
Powerful war propaganda. government funded, CIA approved.
duxup
I don't think that makes sense. A 1970s comedy about a clown luring kids to their death at the hands of the Nazis with funding issues doesn't seem like propaganda ...
Jtsummers
If you read the synopsis (which I presume is close to accurate) on Wikipedia, it does not come across as a comedy at all. A drama with comedic elements (perhaps pushing towards dark comedy at those parts) but not a comedy.
neuroelectron
The film tells the story of a German circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for mocking Adolf Hitler and is then forced to lure children to their deaths as punishment.
“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.”
“It was bad, and it was bad because I lost the magic. No one will ever see it, because I'm embarrassed at the poor work.”
DrNosferatu
The best publicity there is!
Please do post a link to the film, if it finally leaks online.
> I want to sell it to a serious producer who either restores it or keeps it locked away, or restores it and shows it to people for studying purposes.
How is someone who "keeps it locked away" even an option if he believes it "must be seen"?
This seems like the perfect candidate for going on archive.org, if the goal is for it to be preserved and for people to see it.
I also find it odd that he's been screening it for friends since the 80s, yet has only shown it to 24 people.