Filmed in the State of Israel just five years after it was established, "The Juggler" (1953) features Kirk Douglas in a tour de force performance of international resonance. Douglas plays the character of German-Jewish concentration camp survivor Hans Müller, once a famous juggler in Germany, who has immigrated to Israel to begin life anew, facing the hurdle of severe psychological trauma. The film, which is unique in its very direct treatment of the Jewish experience and the Holocaust, is part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive's "Kirk Douglas: A Centennial Celebration." The film was restored by the archive in cooperation with MGM Studios. See it on Saturday, Aug. 17, 7:30 p.m. at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum.
Also screening that night is "Paths of Glory" (1958), in which Douglas gives a powerful performance as an honorable French Army officer who, on orders from his superiors, must lead his men on a doomed mission to wrest control of a German-held hill in WWI France. A quintessential Douglas role pitting the hero against dire circumstance, the film also represented a fortuitous pairing of Douglas' and director Stanley Kubrick's moral temperaments.
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