At the Venice Film Festival, a new documentary will reveal never-before-seen footage from "The Day the Clown Cried," a 1972 Holocaust movie from comedian Jerry Lewis that was never released, but has near-mythic status. Jerry Lewis , the legendary American comedian, once made a film so controversial it has never been seen by the public. "The Day the Clown Cried," shot in 1972, tells the story of a circus clown who leads children to their deaths in a Nazi concentration camp .
The film's plot alone is enough to raise eyebrows, but its troubled production history and subsequent disappearance — the film has never been released to the public and legal issues ensure it likely never will be — have elevated it to near-mythical status among film buffs. "If you just tell people: Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in a drama about a clown in a concentration camp leading children into the gas chambers, people say: 'What? How have I never heard of this movie, how have I never seen it?'" says Shawn Levy, author of "King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis." A new documentary, "From Darkness to Light," explores the making of "The Day the Clown Cried" and Lewis' complicated relationship with it.
The documentary will screen at this year's Venice Film Festival . While it won't show the full film, it promises never-before-seen footage of the movie, providing a glimpse into this enduring Hollywood mystery. The 'Nutty Professor' tries to get serious Lewis, who died in 2017 aged 91,.