Iris Biran On the Holocaust Eve. 5/4/16, I watched this film on Israeli TV. I love old films,but this time, it had a special meaning for me. It turns out that my mother was staying at a retreat in Kibbutz Hanita in the Upper Galilee in Israel while this film was shot there(1953). She remembers that the guests were sitting and watching the filming, and says that Kirk Douglas was very handsome. I could also recognize places in downtown Haifa, my hometown, where the policeman scene was filmed, and to see Haifa harbor as well. It was very exciting to hear it from my mother and to see familiar places in a film that was made before I was born.

bkoganbing 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.

loreguy 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.

myschrec I haven't seen this movie in years, although I remember seeing it when it was first available in the 50's when I was a child and later in the 90's when it was on TV. I recall that Douglas' acting was not as convincing as it could have been, but then the character was deeply disturbed by the War and resettlement in Israel. I recall that scenes of Israel were very convincing. I have relatives in Israel and some of them visited us in the 50's, so I learned a lot about life in Israel. Finally, I recall a wonderful child actor in this movie who does more than anyone else to draw us into the drama. Fifty years later, this film now takes on even more importance as an historical document. I hope it is released on DVD soon.