Director: Fred Coe
Year Released: 1965
Rating: 3.5
The "thousand clowns" of the title are people who go to work every day, same time, mindlessly, for all their lives - in other words, you and me. Jason Robards, the eccentric who lives in an apartment of cluttered junk (filled with way-too symbolic eagle statues and a kite - 'freedom,' if you will), has to choose between his bohemian existence that he loves so much and settling down to a life of what we've come to call 'normalcy' to maintain custody of his whip-cord smart nephew. Pictures like this were made for people like me, the people who wake up every day to re-enact the same routines a la Groundhog Day (such is the life of a teacher, alas), never 'getting time' to see the sights around us (no one in the movie, despite living in NYC, has ever been to the top of the Statue of Liberty). Pandering to the 'beatnik' sensibility? Yes, but it's also sadly true, not to mention meticulously performed (Martin Balsam won an Oscar for what amounts to one speech - but what a speech it is).
