The Greatest Show On Earth (1952) Funny how this movie's Oscar for Best Film still pisses off cinephiles.......
They can't wrap their heads around the idea that back in the day, movies were a true national pastime, with millions of folks crowding into theaters to watch crowd-pleasing Hollywood fare.
The mass audience expected thrills, laughs, romance, action, spectacle, even a few scares. Unlike today, the movies functioned as a big tent and who better to play the ringmaster than producer-director Cecil B. DeMille, one of the first directors to promote himself as a brand name.
And DeMille's brand was spectacle.......big stories, big events, big explosive action and the biggest stars. The Bible often served as his frequent go-to source for thrills 'n chills ("Samson And Delialah", "The Ten Commandments").........but speaking of a big tent, this Impresario of The Impressive found a rare contemporary subject for his mythic storytelling in "The Greatest Show On Earth".
The circus! And why not?
Filled with death defying acrobats, wild animals, and non-stop pageantry, the Ringling Brothers circus and Cecil B. DeMille were made for each other.
As if the circus itself wasn't enough, DeMille and his three screenwriters threw in romantic triangles, gangsters, a kindly doctor on the run for mercy killing his wife, and a 3rd act catastrophic train wreck that looks just as eye-popping today as it did to moviegoers 69 years ago.
Did it deserve a Best Picture Oscar? Probably not, if we're comparing it against some of its competitors....."The Quiet Man" and "High Noon". But if they'd held a People's Choice or MTV movie awards way back then, "The Greatest Show" would've scooped up all the prizes.
And how does it hold up? About as well as can be expected. Newcomer Charlton Heston tears through the movie with single-minded, taciturn ferocity as the circus manager......even when half a train falls on him, he's still barking orders to get the show on the road.
Come to think of it, Heston's performance here lays out the template for many of his future roles to come......the unbending, uncompromising, steel-plated authoritarian. Whether he's wrangling trapeze artists or parting the Red Sea, you better believe it's Chuck's way or the highway.
The other major performance here comes from a beloved actor rendered almost unrecognizable - James Stewart, in clown make-up for the entire 153 minute running time, playing the fugitive doctor.
We dearly loved watching the adorable and later tragic Gloria Grahame doing her own stunts in and around (and on top of) the herd of elephants. But we winced through the usual overdone acting antics of Betty Hutton, for whom they invented the phrase "a little of her goes a long way...."
With travelling circuses long gone and mass appeal feature films now few and far between (just look at last year's nominees), "The Greatest Show On Earth" struck us as both an artifact of its era and an example of the kind of film fast disappearing.......the big tent event that brought all of us back into the movie theater.
For those 2 and a half hours spent watching it, it was fun while it lasted. 3 stars (***)
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