In 1972 the “King of Comedy” Jerry Lewis was at the peak of his career. Driven by the ambition to play a dramatic role for a change, he set out to craft a very special movie project for himself, The Day the Clown Cried. It turned out to be an epic fiasco, becoming an elusive ghost of a movie with Lewis leaving the set and never speaking about what happened. The movie was never completed and has become the ultimate Hollywood myth. Now, after years of research, extensive materials have been found, restored and put into their production context. This documentary tells the story as daring as the original project itself, with Lewis playing a German clown in a concentration camp long before any other director had narrated the Holocaust on the big screen in fiction. Featuring exclusive interviews with cast and crew members like Pierre Étaix, Rune Ericson, long-time friend and companion Martin Scorsese and ultimately Jerry Lewis himself, From Darkness to Light finally uncovers the story of one of the most ambitious US- European coproduction projects of its time, the storm surrounding its shooting and the almost unbearable pressure it put on its protagonist, the “total filmmaker” Jerry Lewis.