one of films who could be defined as special. for theme and for inspired manner to translate it on the screen. for Kirg Douglas performance. for its place in the category of films about Shoah. for the science to present the start of Israel in a poetic-realistic manner. for humor and for the scene of dance and for the shadows of past in the life of the lead character. a film who impress. because it seems be almost a documentary-drama. because it gives more than a List of Schindler . and for the science to use old classic themes and motifs for recreate a kind of beautiful testimony. the force of it - high science to suggest. and a great cast.

I don't know why this isn't a better know film because it's generally well acted and thoroughly absorbing.Kirk Douglas is a famous German juggler who has survived a concentration camp where he lost his wife and children. He winds up a refugee in Haifa but his experiences have left him deranged, mistaking strange women for his wife, claustrophobic, bitterly mistrustful of authority. He runs away from the refugee camp, battering a curious policeman almost to death, and hikes across much of Israel with a boy, Joseph Walsh, that he's picked up along the way. When he reaches a remote kibbutz, they welcome him, and he and one of the staff, Milly Vitale, fall in love. But the police are on his trail because of the assault on the cop. They capture him and take him away for trial and psychiatric treatment.Describing the tale in a precis like this drains it of all blood. Along with "Champion", it's certainly one of Kirk Douglas' finest performances. The climactic scene in which he's locked all the doors to a tiny cabin and threatens to kill any policeman who tries to break in is indescribable. Milly Vitale, at the door, makes the point that he hasn't locked others out, he's locked himself in. And when Douglas realizes that she's speaking the truth, his eyes roll back and his face is distorted with anguish.Of course it's overdone. This is Hollywood speaking. And they want to make sure you get each particular point, even if they have to hit you over the head with a crowbar to do it. Thus, when Douglas' shirt sleeve is accidentally rolled back, uncovering his tattoo, someone must remark, "That's a concentration camp number. You must have been in a concentration camp!" The last shot is a disappointment, with Douglas on his knees, begging for help.At the kibbutz we get the happy peasant cliché. Everyone is kindly and unpretentious. They take pleasure in simple things, like the arrival of two cows, which they decorate with flowers. And after that, there must be a folk dance to George Antheil's frenzied music and Edward Dmytryk's gigantic close ups of wildly happy faces.The cast look genuine enough in dusty work clothes. Douglas appears only briefly with his hair carefully trimmed, combed, and moussed. But Milly Vitale is always made up and wears a stylish 1953 do. That's a mistake, because Milly Vitale is radiant and doesn't need her face plastered with goo.But there are moments, sometimes brief, just a line or two of dialog, that stand out as if accompanied by barely perceived fanfares. On a hilltop, Douglas is explaining how he lost his family -- thank God, no flashbacks -- and then he answers all her questions with old jokes or tricks. As for how he was swept up, "The juggler is juggled." Why can't he accept the kibbutz as his home? Douglas is juggling four oranges (he's pretty good) and he repeats, in time with the rotation of the fruit, "Home . . is a place . . you lose." Like "The Pawn Broker," the film deals not with the suffering of the concentration camps but with the suffering that lives on within us after the horror is "over." It's a difficult movie to forget.

The Juggler is the story of a concentration camp survivor in 1949 trying to make a place for himself in the new state of Israel. As the hopes and dreams of so many Jews over many generations are realized, a country where they're not the guests or the barely tolerated minority, Kirk Douglas as Hans Muller can't leave the memory of what he's survived behind in Europe.Back in the day Douglas was a music hall entertainer, a juggler by trade, and from what I could see Douglas mastered the art himself to make his performance quite believable. As an actor I have never seen anyone better than Kirk Douglas to go from 0 to 120 in emotions in a matter of seconds. Kirk needed that ability to play the psychologically tattered Hans Muller.A lot of folks who survived questioned the very nature of nature's God to have allowed such a thing to happen. Even more so they questioned the randomness of those who did survive. Douglas lost his wife and children there.When he wanders away from the settlement camp in Haifa and is questioned by an Israeli policeman, the demons from Europe return and Douglas strikes at the cop. Thinking he's killed him Kirk goes on the run and he teams up with another camp survivor, an orphan played by Joey Walsh. Their wanderings and eventually settling down in a kibbutz is most of the film. The Juggler was the first American production to be shot in Israel and we see Douglas and Walsh in the real Haifa, the real Nazareth and in the countryside of Israel which had seen its own war for survival at birth the year before. The Juggler however does stick to the story and it doesn't just become an Israel travelogue. And it's a nice story about a good man who's seen the worst of what his fellow human beings can do just trying to find a place in a promising, but strange new world.

One of Kirk Douglas' more intense performances,it is a pity that this movie should remain a buried treasure."Surviving the horror" could be another title for "the juggler" .A Jew ,who has lost all his family and who has known the concentration camps comes back to the promised land in 1949.Life during WW2 camps has often been described,but life AFTER the nightmare is a subject which has rarely been told in movies with a few exceptions ("die Morder sind unter uns ":Susanne's character and "Exodus": the young man played by Sal Mineo).But never as successfully as here.Hans cannot forget.His psyche is shot."I'm the juggler and the juggled" . He tries to find back his dear departed although he knows they were killed.He suffers from claustrophobia and Douglas makes us FEEL his disease (the film owes a great deal to this extraordinary actor),and every time he sees men in uniform ,he thinks of his torturers.Admirable sequences: Douglas in the desert town ,with all these walls which imprison him ,and those men around who are threats .The minefield where the distraught man and his young pal are rescued by their fellow men who form a human chain.In his absorbing memoirs,Douglas wrote that he once helped Dmytryk who was one of the Unfriendly Tens .But when they made "the juggler" ,the director acted as if they had never met.Douglas thought he was ashamed for having been an informer.But he did not judge him at all.What would I have done if I had been in his shoes ? he wrote.Many films might suggest that Dmytryk was suffering from of a strong guilty feeling: "the sniper" with his burned arm,José Ferrer's arm in a sling in "Caine Mutiny" .And in this film ,Douglas "gagging" his arm-mouth ,or covering it to hide his tattooed number.I agree with all the precedent users.A film which must be restored to favor.