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Comedy for Jerry Lewis can be a lethal trade, the Borscht Belt strangulates. A famous comic goes down in flames, the bellhop fills the void. "Looking and feeling just like any ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, famous, rich star" is an arduous assignment: Everett Sloane orders fashion advice from John Carradine, Phil Harris and Keenan Wynn rehearse punchlines, Ina Balin provides the winsome conscience and Peter Lorre the mépris. Still, their hapless Galatea flubs even the zinger he was born to deliver ("Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce myself, but I don't know me either"). Great student of Tashlin that he is, Lewis understands showbiz as system upon system dedicated to the fabrication and packaging of image and identity. An ersatz world of sound stages and hotel rooms—hideous green carpet has replaced grass, Hedda Hopper and Ed Sullivan are absurdly exaggerated versions of themselves, the protagonist sees himself as a reflection of George Raft and then the reflection walks away. The phony line of being sincere (cf. Russell's Valentino), the bifurcation of hipsterism (the demolition of Hans Conried's antique-filled manor) and schmaltz (the prom-dance flashback) that refuses to be harmonized. "In the old days, we'd have you bathing in champagne or committing suicide." A supreme deconstruction of performance with Lewis repeatedly pushing "on" and "off" buttons, most brilliantly in the patsy's disastrous nightclub debut. (The sense of excruciation is later sought by Penn's Mickey One and Fosse's Lenny, to say nothing of Albert Brooks.) Modernist dissonance in a classical studio ("I Lost My Heart in a Drive-in Movie"), the firing squad in the audience. Death and self-reflexive resurrection at the close go into Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry. With Del Moore, Buddy Lester, Richard Deacon, Neil Hamilton, Nancy Kulp, and Scatman Crothers.
--- Fernando F. Croce |