Stanley is a bellboy at the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami Beach, where he performs his duties quietly and without a word to anyone. All he displays are facial expressions and a comedic slapstick style. And anything that can go wrong, does go wrong when Stanley is involved. One day, Jerry Lewis arrives at the hotel and some of the staff notice the striking resemblance.
O Mensageiro Trapalhão, Ragazzo tuttofare, Le Dingue du Palace, Hallo, Page!, El botones, Jerry no Grande Hotel, נער המעלית, Пиколото, Jerry som Piccolo, Jerry piccolona, Παιδί για όλες τις δουλειές, Lökött londiner, Boy hotelowy, Alla tiders gågosse, Коридорный, Garsonun marifetleri, 五福临门, 벨보이, El grum
USA
BrazilL
Germany6
Austria12
France
Austria
Brazil
France
Germany
USA
A very funny movie. He's at his peak here, folks. His face, his body, his eye, his ear, and his supremely abnormal brain are all working together like well-oiled gears.
I'll bet a month hasn't gone by that I haven't thought of Martin Scorsese calling this movie "a virtual dictionary of visual thought."
"No story, and no plot!"
I still feel so surprised seeing the logo of a major studio following the conclusion of this film! This has to be one of the most inventive directorial debuts within the Hollywood cinema - it's fascinating that so much of the humor is from the fact that Stanley is literately incapable of doing anything, as this allows for Lewis the filmmaker to find solutions within his formal design. Which of course, are often non-solutions. It's a purity in invention, and by rejection of narrative Lewis finds himself in a position where he can construct a structure of his own motifs, wholly on his own terms. There is in-fact a narrative here, but it rejects the…
Lewis does things with his fsce and body no one else could. A paradox an experimental movie a about freedom that needs so much control its main matter is the filmmaker’s body.
Total anarchy - I don't think ever before a directors personality, their entire psyche, had so totally manifested on screen. Initially Lewis's body drives the gags, but slowly his hand behind the camera drives them as well. It is what it is - "no story, no plot. It is actually a series of silly sequences, or you might say a visual diary - a few weeks in the life of a real nut."
”There’s an awful lot of kooks in this hotel”
This plotless collection of extremely silly sketches features Jerry Lewis as man-child bellboy who spends the majority of his time mugging for the camera.
This was the first movie directed by Lewis and his silent clownish behavior feels like he’s doing an American riff on Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.
The Milton Berle cameo was the highlight of the show and watching Jerry Lewis attempting to walk twenty various dogs simultaneously was certainly worth the price of admission. However, while some of the humor lands, for me, an overwhelming amount of the jokes fell flat and you could see their punchlines coming a mile away.
“So you see, there was no story.
But there is a moral…”
85/100
Holy shit. 72 minutes of chaotic gags stretched and bent to maximum lucidity, with Lewis's Stanley character confounded, surprised, and in awe of the whirlwind surrounding his movements even though he doesn't understand that he's always responsible. Its bookends feel studio mandated, but the rest is audacious and brilliant in a way that left me profoundly confused and in tears after some of the more surreal payoffs (one involving an invisible apple made my sides hurt). Just a joy.
"The Bellboy" is a 1960 screwball comedy effort directed by Jerry Lewis. Also, "The Bellboy" was inceptionally written, produced and starred Jerry Lewis upon filming, within an entirety effort that pays off in Lewis' favor in terms of success. Conventionally coming forward as a film void of plot and narration, we are invited into the screwy day to day of the observable "wild animal" that is the bellhop within the constraints of his natural habitat. Laughably no, it's not like some zany safari kind of observation kind of piece but rather an instructional booklet of the profession turned backwards and inside out to allow Lewis to embellish small, nuanced scenarios in a hyper humorous manner. Immediately, someone like me that…
More movies should begin with the producer warning you that there is no story or plot.
"You never know the next guy's story, unless you ask."
Funny, charming and stupid. Jerry Lewis playing the dumb guy, who turns out to be just one of the guys. Jerry Lewis playing himself. Jerry Lewis ruining golf tournaments. Jerry Lewis stealing airplanes. Jerry Lewis whistling. Jerry Lewis reverse Weight-Watchers. Jerry Lewis classic.
The same year that Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder were blowing their chosen forms into kingdom come, Jerry Lewis did the same damn thing with The Bellboy, all the more remarkable given that it's his debut film as a director.
In a move that was probably only possible for a huge star like Lewis, he does away with those eternal pests, story and plot, replacing them with one glorious set-piece after another. No love interest, no faux drama, and best of all, no Jerry Lewis trying to be a convincing romantic lead.
Some of the bits are funnier than others, but like with Jacques Tati or Buster Keaton, I end up gasping at Lewis' audacity even when I'm not laughing (a rare occurrence, but it happens once or twice).
Lewis é o último palhaço a se expressar através do cinema (com Tati e Étaix), ele também é uma das últimas ilhas da indústria cinematográfica a fazer um cinema popular e profundo. Os últimos anos viram a mudança do cinema da emoção para um cinema da contestação. Lewis, verdadeiro artista, sabe emocionar contestando. É, de certa forma, uma consciência voltada a outras consciências. - Noël Simsolo, Le monde de Jerry Lewis
É em relação a essa exigência que os filmes hoje se dividem.
(...)
b) Uma segunda categoria é a de filmes que operam uma dupla ação em sua inserção ideológica. Em primeiro lugar, uma ação diretamente política: ao nível do “significado”, pelo tratamento deste ou daquele tema explicitamente político…
