Jerry Lewis. Il corpo pop dell'inconscio americano

[Machine translation] Jerry Lewis (1926-2017) was one of the greatest comedic actors in the history of cinema. Heir to the tradition of vaudeville and silent cinema, he entered the American scene (initially in a couple with Dean Martin) at the end of the 1940s, adapting to different contexts and forms of expression: Jerry Lewis is an entertainer in nightclubs, a television showman, a film actor, a comic book, and occasionally a crooner. Since 1960 he has also been a director: his films are very refined theoretical reflections on the comedian and, more generally, on cinema, but also complex spectacular machines with which he proves capable of contributing to the technological advancement of the Seventh Art. A clown out of control on stage, interpreter of characters psychologically stuck in childhood, Lewis has embodied a critique of the plastic America of the Fifties and Sixties, only apparently reassuring and happy. Like Charlie Chaplin, he was able to look clearly at his time, just like Stan Laurel he knew how to give a sublime form to the catastrophe. Loved by the directors of the Nouvelle Vague, related to Pop Art, capable of absolute abstraction (especially in recent directors), he is also remembered for his collaborations with authors such as Martin Scorsese or Emir Kusturica.