Le jongleur

Juggler, The (1953)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Kirk Douglas plays a Holocaust survivor who is still suffering mental illness after ten years in a concentration camp where he also learned that his wife and children were killed by being put in an oven. After the war Douglas goes to Israel to try and start his life over but his mental condition nearly leads to him killing a cop but he heads off and finds new friends in a closed off community but his past is still looking for him. Edward Dymtryk directed this film, which has its heart in the right place but there are a few major flaws that really kills the film. Needless to say, Douglas gives a very strong and heartbreaking performance and I've heard this is one of his favorites. There's a scene towards the start of the film where he sees a woman with two children and thinks that they are his even though he knows they're really dead. The breakdown Douglas shows in this scene is among the best of his career. There are countless dramatic moments like this one and here lies one of the problems. Douglas gives a strong enough of a performance where the director should have let the acting do the talking but instead of doing that he pumps up the music score. Every time something dramatic happens he pumps up the music score and this here killed most of the drama for me. The film also wants to make the viewer cry every few minutes and this doesn't work either.

As the child of a holocaust survivor who joined the Israeli army in 1947, I grew up watching this movie with my father. It had not been on for many years but I got to see it again a few years ago. It is a good movie, I believe filmed on location in Israel. The theme is more about Hans (Kirk Douglas) and his adjustment to a new life while carrying the burden of being in the camps. At the beginning he tries to hide his identity by covering his arm to hide his tattoo. All I can say is watch it, it is worth it.

One of Kirk Douglas' more intense performances,it is a pity that this movie should remain a buried treasure.

"Surviving the horror" could be another title for "the juggler" .A Jew ,who has lost all his family and who has known the concentration camps comes back to the promised land in 1949.Life during WW2 camps has often been described,but life AFTER the nightmare is a subject which has rarely been told in movies with a few exceptions ("die Morder sind unter uns ":Susanne's character and "Exodus": the young man played by Sal Mineo).But never as successfully as here.

Hans cannot forget.His psyche is shot."I'm the juggler and the juggled" . He tries to find back his dear departed although he knows they were killed.He suffers from claustrophobia and Douglas makes us FEEL his disease (the film owes a great deal to this extraordinary actor),and every time he sees men in uniform ,he thinks of his torturers.

Admirable sequences: Douglas in the desert town ,with all these walls which imprison him ,and those men around who are threats .The minefield where the distraught man and his young pal are rescued by their fellow men who form a human chain.

In his absorbing memoirs,Douglas wrote that he once helped Dmytryk who was one of the Unfriendly Tens .But when they made "the juggler" ,the director acted as if they had never met.Douglas thought he was ashamed for having been an informer.But he did not judge him at all.What would I have done if I had been in his shoes ? he wrote.

Many films might suggest that Dmytryk was suffering from of a strong guilty feeling: "the sniper" with his burned arm,José Ferrer's arm in a sling in "Caine Mutiny" .And in this film ,Douglas "gagging" his arm-mouth ,or covering it to hide his tattooed number.

I agree with all the precedent users.A film which must be restored to favor.

Considering that Hollywood never really tackled the Holocaust until Schindler's List and that it only set one other prominent film (Exodus) in Israel, this remarkable movie is amazing on many levels. Douglass shows once again that he was as versatile as any actor, not merely as a juggler and stage-comedian, but also as a rugged but tortured individual on the run from his pursuers. The setting in post war Israel is wonderful, the supporting players all fine, and some of the scenes sublime (the dance sequence at the kibbutz, the couple's tender embrace, the juggling show, etc.). It is one of the few American films that mentions the terrors of the Holocaust in any direct manner, and one of the few that portrays contemporary Israel realistically. Although, as noted by some critics, it has its flaws, including the lack of a German accent by Kirk, it is still an incredible production on so many levels that it deserves to be seen by a greater audience, which may happen, since it was just screened by TCM this afternoon, where I was luck enough to see it.

Grew up in Queens, New York and had a wonderful Jewish family as my next door neighbors and one day I noticed the lady of the house had a number stamped on her arm and heard the story of what she experienced and it left a great impression on me all my life. This film directed by a very famous man Edward Dmytryke gave a great portrayal of the mental effects it had on a man named, Hans Muller, (Kirk Doublas) who was a German refugee from Germany relocating to Israel after WW II. Hans Muller was a Juggler who entertained many people and young children and was a wonderful tender hearted man, but he had serious psychological effects from his being confined in the Nazi Concentration camps and witnessed the horrors of what Hitler created for human beings being burned in ovens. Milly Vitale (YaEl) gave a great supporting role and this is truly a great great film that will show many generations what really went on during the Horrors of Nazi Germany.