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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.

The Juggler is the story of a concentration camp survivor in 1949 trying to make a place for himself in the new state of Israel. As the hopes and dreams of so many Jews over many generations are realized, a country where they're not the guests or the barely tolerated minority, Kirk Douglas as Hans Muller can't leave the memory of what he's survived behind in Europe.

Back in the day Douglas was a music hall entertainer, a juggler by trade, and from what I could see Douglas mastered the art himself to make his performance quite believable. As an actor I have never seen anyone better than Kirk Douglas to go from 0 to 120 in emotions in a matter of seconds. Kirk needed that ability to play the psychologically tattered Hans Muller.

A lot of folks who survived questioned the very nature of nature's God to have allowed such a thing to happen. Even more so they questioned the randomness of those who did survive. Douglas lost his wife and children there.

When he wanders away from the settlement camp in Haifa and is questioned by an Israeli policeman, the demons from Europe return and Douglas strikes at the cop. Thinking he's killed him Kirk goes on the run and he teams up with another camp survivor, an orphan played by Joey Walsh.

Their wanderings and eventually settling down in a kibbutz is most of the film. The Juggler was the first American production to be shot in Israel and we see Douglas and Walsh in the real Haifa, the real Nazareth and in the countryside of Israel which had seen its own war for survival at birth the year before.

The Juggler however does stick to the story and it doesn't just become an Israel travelogue. And it's a nice story about a good man who's seen the worst of what his fellow human beings can do just trying to find a place in a promising, but strange new world.

I haven't seen this movie in years, although I remember seeing it when it was first available in the 50's when I was a child and later in the 90's when it was on TV. I recall that Douglas' acting was not as convincing as it could have been, but then the character was deeply disturbed by the War and resettlement in Israel. I recall that scenes of Israel were very convincing. I have relatives in Israel and some of them visited us in the 50's, so I learned a lot about life in Israel. Finally, I recall a wonderful child actor in this movie who does more than anyone else to draw us into the drama. Fifty years later, this film now takes on even more importance as an historical document. I hope it is released on DVD soon.

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.

KIRK DOUGLAS struggles to forget the horrors of a concentration camp in THE JUGGLER, another one of Stanley Kramer's serious socially conscious films of the '50s. Unfortunately, the end result is a film that doesn't really connect with its target audience despite a solid performance by Douglas as the troubled Jew from Israel unable to overcome his fear and bitterness.

Unfortunately, Kramer had a habit of assigning George Antheil to score his films. Antheil contributes another inappropriate score heavily accenting any melodramatic moment that points up Kirk's anguish, much the way he did in Kramer's NOT AS A STRANGER. It didn't work there and it doesn't work here, especially during the "escape" scene where the music reaches a frenzied fever pitch of discordant notes.

It's hard to fully sympathize with Douglas' tormented character and that is the film's chief handicap. As the man tracking down the fugitive, PAUL STEWART does his usual workmanlike job. Trouble is, there's an almost documentary feel to the story and its pivotal character is never fully fleshed out, remaining somewhat of an enigma despite Douglas' good performance. When romance comes into the story with the entrance of MILLY VITALE, Douglas' character softens a little under her compassionate care.

Some vivid glimpses of Israel, circa 1949, and good location photography gives the story an authentic air, but the story values are never more than ordinary and the total effect is bland.

Worthwhile mainly for Kirk Douglas fans, it fails to make the impact intended as a serious study of a man haunted by prison camp memories.