Too much of everything

This is How Movies Should Be Made

So much average

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

He came out of a camp, and his family was killed in a concentration camp. He is now in Israel, in another camp where they are working on his integration, but somehow he can't believe it's all over. He runs away and mistakes a policeman for a Nazi. What is nice about this film is that it shows an Israel, just after its creation, with a remarkable cinematography in black and white by J. Roy Hunt. We feel throughout the film a spirit of collaboration, of trying to help, in spite of Hans Muller's (Kirk Douglas) action of hitting the policeman, seeming inexcusable. Also a great scene of Muller's redemption dancing the Hora. Like another reviewer I first saw this film with my father ,was greatly impressed, tried to find it with no success until now. Apart from some scenes where Douglas overacted and the final scene, overdone, this film did not age. And the fact that it shows the country of Israel, the language and the people, so unusual for an American film at that time, just that, makes it worth seeing.

Kirk tries really hard, and has some amazing scenes of non-verbal acting greatness, but quite often he's a two-note nutcase, going from really nice to really angry and violent. There's not much more to the film than this. Seeing it again recently makes me wish they had taken a few more risks with non-formulaic elements. I enjoyed seeing a young John Banner playing a Dutch tourist who helps the police pursue Kirk. He's far more pleasant than the caricature we all remember him as: the bumbling Sgt. Shultz from "Hogan's Heroes"The kid from "Hans Christian Anderson" is here too, playing Kirk's sidekick instead of Danny Kaye's. And Paul Stewart, the guy who was Kane's valet in "Citizen Kane" is the cop. He was in a TON of television in the 60s.

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.

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.