Editing Jerry Lewis (section)

=== Exposure in France ===
{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk|fontsize=100%|salign=center|quote="Americans are the people who, when the French decided that Jerry Lewis was a genius, never stopped to ask why, but immediately branded France a nation of idiots." —Biographer [[Jeanine Basinger]] in ''Silent Stars'' (1999).<ref>[[Jeanine Basinger|Basinger, Jeanine]]. 1999. ''Silent Stars''. [[Alfred A. Knopf]], New York. {{ISBN | 0-679-43840-8}} p. 65: Opening sentence to chapter entitled “Mabel and the Kops.”</ref> }}
While Lewis was popular in France for his duo films with Dean Martin and his solo comedy films, his reputation and stature increased after the Paramount contract, when he began to exert total control over all aspects of his films. His involvement in directing, writing, editing and art direction coincided with the rise of [[auteur]] theory in French intellectual film criticism and the [[French New Wave]] movement. He earned consistent praise from French critics in the influential magazines ''[[Cahiers du Cinéma]]'' and ''[[Positif (magazine)|Positif]],'' where he was hailed as an ingenious auteur.{{Citation needed|date=December 2022}}

His singular ''[[mise-en-scène]],'' and skill behind the camera, were aligned with [[Howard Hawks]], [[Alfred Hitchcock]] and [[Satyajit Ray]]. Appreciated too, was the complexity of his also being in front of the camera. The new French criticism viewed [[Cinematography|cinema]] as an art form unto itself, and comedy as part of this art. Lewis is then fitted into a historical context and seen as not only worthy of critique, but as an innovator and satirist of his time.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Film|first=Hollis|last=Alpert|chapter=le roi du crazy|publisher=The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc.|location=New York|pages=23–25|year=1968}}</ref> [[Jean-Pierre Coursodon]] states in a 1975 ''[[Film Comment]]'' article, "The merit of the French critics, auteurist excesses notwithstanding, was their willingness to look at what Lewis was doing as a filmmaker for what it was, rather than with some preconception of what film comedy should be."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Coursodon |first1=Jean-Pierre |title=Jerry Lewis's Films: No Laughing Matter? |journal=Film Comment |date=July–August 1975 |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=9–15 |jstor=43754397 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43754397 |access-date=5 March 2024 |archive-date=April 5, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405105059/https://www.jstor.org/stable/43754397 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Curricula at universities or art schools, [[film studies]] and [[film theory]] were not yet [[avant-garde]] in early 1960s America. Mainstream movie reviewers such as [[Pauline Kael]], were dismissive of auteur theory, and others, seeing only absurdist comedy, criticized Lewis for his ambition and "castigated him for his self-indulgence" and egotism. Despite this criticism being often held by American film critics, admiration for Lewis and his comedy continued to grow in France.<ref>{{Cite web|date=August 21, 2017|title=The slapstick, the telethons, 'L-a-a-a-dy!' – comic and philanthropist Jerry Lewis dies at 91|url=https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-jerry-lewis-20170820-story.html|access-date=September 14, 2020|website=Los Angeles Times|archive-date=September 12, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200912205811/https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-jerry-lewis-20170820-story.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Appreciation of Lewis by "the French" became something of a stereotype and was often the object of jokes in American pop culture.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1349/do-the-french-really-love-jerry-lewis|title=Do the French really love Jerry Lewis?|date=October 1, 1999|publisher=The Straight Dope|first=Cecil|last=Adams|access-date=May 4, 2015|archive-date=May 4, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150504175925/http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1349/do-the-french-really-love-jerry-lewis|url-status=live}}</ref> "That Americans can't see Jerry Lewis's genius is bewildering", says N. T. Binh, a French film magazine critic. Such bewilderment was the basis of the book ''Why the French Love Jerry Lewis.''<ref name=Poirier>{{cite news|last=Poirier|first=Agnes C.|title=Le Grand Jerry Lewis |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/le-grand-jerry-lewis.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220103/https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/le-grand-jerry-lewis.html |archive-date=January 3, 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|access-date=May 21, 2013|newspaper=The New York Times|date=May 19, 2013}}{{cbignore}}</ref>