Jerry Lewis

To note that the films of Jerry Lewis are a rich, pleasurable and endlessly fascinating meditation on their medium is to say little. With Lewis, it’s necessary to specify which medium. Film, of course; but this is a medium that Lewis’ work has changed and redefined – through such inventions as the video assist, which he introduced in 1960, and through the inventions of sound, image and performance that proliferate in his films. Then there’s the medium of selfhood; and as Lewis’ selfhood is…