Despite the traditional August lull and the terrorist attacks in Barcelona, Spain, the passing of Jerry Lewis has been big news here in France, where the American actor-writer-director-producer was revered as an outstanding artist, and a polymath auteur. The French daily newspaper Liberation stated it clearly and simply on its front page: “Genie Lewis” （Lewis the genius）, summarizing in two wards what the French have thought of the American comedian since the early 1950s.
Francoise Nyssen, France’s culture minister, said Mr. Lewis had “reinvigorated American burlesque.” She added that he “didn't always receive the praise he deserved in his home country, whereas French critics recognized his talent from early on. ”
Ms. Nyssen’s statement concluded: “Jerry Lewis made us laugh, he made us happy. France, which was the country of his heart and of his success, will always dearly remember his voice, his silhouette and his humor.”
Jerry Lewis was always the subject of a trans-Atlantic misunderstanding, provoking sarcasm in the United States and bewilderment in France. While some Americans felt embarrassed by this contortionist comic, the French embraced his humor as both an abstract art and a satire of American life. Americans mocked the French for falling for this crass clown, while the French couldn't understand why his genius was not obvious to his compatriots.
The French saw in Mr. Lewis a man who dared, an experimentalist and pioneer, and an artist with an absolute creative freedom. He knew no bounds, no limits. His early champion here was the influential French film critic Robert Benayoun, who wrote a seminal book
on Mr. Lewis. A friend of Andre Breton and other Surrealists, Mr. Benayoun saw in Mr. Lewis’s humor a continuation of Surrealism and the Theater of the Absurd. In his book, “Bonjour Monsieur Lewis,” Mr. Benayoun wrote, “Since Buster Keaton died, Lewis has been the world's biggest comic artist.”
Following Mr. Benayoun, the enfants terribles of the French New Wave, Louis Malle, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, also embraced Mr.Lewis’s work. His early films as a director, such as “The Bellboy,” “The Ladies Man” and “The Errand Boy” － which he also wrote, produced and starred in － were heralded as masterpieces in France. Edouard Waintrop, artistic director of the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, said that “The Bellboy,” Mr. Lewis’s directorial debut, “remains one of the funniest and most audacious films in cinema history, a series of gags without any sentimentality.”
“Lewis’s face is the grimacing mirror of our vanities,” said the French film critic Pierre Murat. “His body, as bendy as rubber, is the reflection of our ridicule.” He added that Mr. Lewis, as writer, director and actor, inherently trusted “the public’s intelligence, and their culture,” continuing, “Everybody understood at the time that ‘The Bellboy’ was a rapt homage to Stan Laurel, the thinking man of the Laurel and Hardy duo － exactly like Jerry when he was Dean Martin’s sidekick.” In a memorable scene from the film, Mr. Lewis, in the title role, is ordered to bring a tourist's luggage to her hotel room from her car. In the next scene, we see him haul in the vehicle’s engine. We don't know what has happened, we can only imagine. Mr. Lewis’s art lay in the ellipsis.
“Lewis’s face is the grimacing mirror of our vanities,” said the French film critic Pierre Murat. “His body, as bendy as rubber, is the reflection of our ridicule.” He added that Mr. Lewis, as writer, director and actor, inherently trusted “the public’s intelligence, and their culture,” continuing, “Everybody understood at the time that ‘The Bellboy’ was a rapt homage to Stan Laurel, the thinking man of the Laurel and Hardy duo － exactly like Jerry when he was Dean Martin’s sidekick.” In a memorable scene from the film, Mr. Lewis, in the title role, is ordered to bring a tourist's luggage to her hotel room from her car. In the next scene, we see him haul in the vehicle’s engine. We don't know what has happened, we can only imagine. Mr. Lewis’s art lay in the ellipsis.
