Die größte Schau der Welt

"The Greatest Show on Earth" is a good movie and it's entertaining enough, it's just not an Oscar-winning caliber movie. As other reviewers have noted, this film was probably given its Best Picture Oscar as a kind of life-time achievement award to Cecil B. DeMille. It wasn't that the Academy felt that they had unjustly snubbed DeMille in the past for any specific film, it was just that he had always made those kind of epic cast-of-thousands types of pictures that drew in the audiences but that rarely won Oscars. Plus, a large body of DeMille's work had been done before the Academy Awards even came into existence in 1927. The whole thing seems especially unjust when you look at the competition that year. Two of the other nominees - "High Noon" and "The Quiet Man" are considered unique and classic to this day. Also, there is a film in the top 10 of AFI Best Films from that year that didn't even get nominated for best picture - Singin' in the Rain - which is arguably the best musical film ever made. It's rather ironic that just four years later the Academy could have probably awarded DeMille more legitimately when he made his last movie, the epic "The Ten Commandments", in 1956.

This movie is basically a documentary on how the Ringling Brothers circus operated in the early 50's, and large chunks of film are taken up showing how the Big Top was assembled, the manual labor involved, how the entire circus - including wild animals - was transported via rail, and basically just all of the hard work that went on behind the scenes. There is also a pretty spectacular scene near the end of the film involving the two trains as they are transporting the circus from one town to another. I say "was" because the circus as it is portrayed in this movie closed down and ceased to exist in 1956. The truth is that the Ringling Brothers circus never fully recovered financially from the double whammy of the Great Depression and a fatal fire that killed over 100 people in Hartford, Connecticut in 1944 and thus was in the process of failing even when this movie was made. The plot of the movie is very thin, the main thread being an uninspired love triangle involving the two stars of the trapeze act, Holly and the Great Sebastion, played by Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde respectively, and the managing boss of the traveling show, Brad Braden, played by Charleton Heston. The subplots include an elephant trainer who is obsessed over a girl in the show who doesn't care for him, some small-time mobsters whose crooked games get thrown off the lot by Brad, and "Buttons" the clown, played by Jimmy Stewart, who never takes off his makeup and who seems to have a mysterious past. All of these plot lines are just there to hold the documentary part of the film together and also as a backdrop for all of the circus acts that are numerous and quite spectacular to behold, especially the acrobatic acts. Quite honestly, one-fourth into the movie you can see the outcome of the dramatic portion of the movie coming at you from a mile away. This makes the fact that this movie won Best Motion Picture Screenplay an even odder decision than the Best Picture award.

There is some interesting trivia involving the film. Famous clown Emmett Kelly can be seen at one point in the film without makeup - a fact that Mr. Kelly was not happy about. Also, Dorothy Lamour has a supporting role in this film, and during one of her musical performances in the show the camera pans to the audience -as it often does in this film - but this time you get a brief glimpse of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope enjoying the show. The inside joke here is that Lamour, Crosby, and Hope were the costars of the popular series of "Road to ..." movies of the 40's and 50's.

As time goes by circuses have become scarcer and in many parts of the world are no longer in business. In the 50's and 60's they were indeed on top of the world. Children loved the circus with performing animals, trapeze artists and other performers and especially the clowns. And with all this tension and awe, sweets, popcorn and ice cream were consumed in large numbers.

This era will never be seen again because of changed circumstances.

To take yourself back in time and especially for children to experience this missed opportunity, you can do no better than view this film. It has it all and is a spectacular glamorous show, with a number of underlying stories to tell as well. Worth a sparking star rating of 8 in 2020.

It constantly amazes me that people carp that this won best Picture, as though no movie before or since ever won when maybe they shouldn't have. It was a big picture, it had a great story, it gave a lot of bang for the buck and that has always been a factor in grabbing the Oscar. It does seem a bit dated to us now, used to high flying special effects, different acting styles, and quick cut editing, instead of letting the scene play out as it so often does here, but it's such a great story. The circus itself is a character and the way Demille used the audience to make them seem so individual is wonderful. And I'm not just referring to the Hope/Crosby cameo. Remember the fat guy with the kid scarfing down the ice cream laughing his head off while the kid looked confused? You could tell he was reliving his childhood and he became EveryMan to us with only seconds of screen time. That's mastery. The integration of the real circus people with the actors was seamless and if nothing else this movie captures a time when the circus was really a circus. Carp all you want, guys. But I think you may be too spoiled by ultra realism to appreciate the subtler gems in this very respectable film.

I know that some people are down on this movie, but I absolutely LOVE it. It has great ideals and good (not great) acting. It tells a story about the circus in a pseudo-documentary. The story has love, action, and humor. Three things that are missing from much of today's movie. I also love the color and the dramatic "feel" of the film for that era. It's a wonderful, wonderful, piece of 'Americana'.

The Greatest Show on Earth is a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza, maybe the best one he ever produced and directed. Unlike his religious films or his historical films, this film is a nice tribute to an American institution, the Ringling Brothers&Barnum&Bailey Circus and as such it does not attract the controversy of some of his other films.

The Best Picture Oscar for 1952 that this film won was more of a tribute to a Hollywood institution. Cecil B. DeMille in fact directed the first Hollywood made film, The Squaw Man, forty years earlier and this Oscar was essentially a tribute to him for the work of a lifetime. Not the first time or the last time the Motion Picture Academy has done that.

This is DeMille spectacle at it's best. The circus as a cinema subject, so full of color and life, is ideal for a DeMille production. Wonderful camera work marks this film, both of the circus acts and the reaction shots into the crowd of the children of all ages.

Cecil B. DeMille himself narrates portions of the film showing the work involved in putting on the Greatest Show on Earth. His was a familiar voice to the American public because for 10 years DeMille came into American households via radio narrating the Lux Radio Theater. In fact until Alfred Hitchcock got his own anthology TV series, DeMille's voice was probably the most known to the American public of a film director.

And only his name and that of Walt Disney's of people behind the camera were guaranteed box office in the days of the Hollywood studio system.

Spectacle was his thing and DeMille was the master. As a director of players and a judge of good modern writing, DeMille left a lot to be desired. Because of the nature of the subject, no great historical or religious events, the grandiloquent dialog present in so many DeMille films is kept to a minimum here.

This was Charlton Heston's first big break as a star and his second film under a Paramount contract. He had done a film called Dark City, a good noir thriller that got good reviews, but did little for him personally. DeMille saw the six foot two Heston walking on the Paramount lot one day and just said to himself that this was to be the circus ramrod for this film.

But Heston was fourth billed behind Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, and Gloria Grahame, all better known than him at the time. Wilde and Grahame were independents as was James Stewart who played a clown with a hidden past.

Stewart in fact had always wanted to play a clown and took this supporting role with smaller billing just for the opportunity. At the time he agreed to do this, his wife Gloria was pregnant with their twin daughters. Stewart had it in his contract a clause that gave him permission to leave the film temporarily to be with Gloria when her time was near. In fact Gloria McLean Stewart had a rough time with the birth and Jimmy exercised that option and totally enraged DeMille who had to shut down production for a few days. He and DeMille did not get along after that though Stewart finished the film and was great in it.

Gloria Grahame may not have been the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, but she was the most seductive operating in 1952. That was a banner year for her. She got a Best Supporting Actress for The Bad and the Beautiful on top of this DeMille film. As the elephant girl she attracts the unwanted attentions of Lyle Bettger who plays an elephant trainer.

Bettger was a great player at that time who played a lovely variety of psychopaths on the screen. He pulls out all the stops here and its his unwanted attentions to Grahame that set up the final scenes.

Dorothy Lamour was here also in a supporting part and she gets to sing Lovely Luawanna Lady in sarong and the reaction shots of the crowd focus on a couple of familiar faces who panted after her in a few Paramount films.

The story itself is a standard four sided triangle involving Heston, Hutton, Wilde, and Grahame with Bettger horning in. You have to see the film to find out who winds up with who.

However the high point of the film involves a circus train wreck. DeMille got a lot of notice for wrecking a train in Union Pacific back in 1939. So he doubles the excitement and wrecks two trains here with circus animals pouring out of busted cages. Great stuff.

Betty Hutton was coming close to the end of her film career. This and Annie Get Your Gun would be her biggest triumphs. Given DeMille's limitations on directing players, Hutton is surprisingly subdued here and effective. She also sings a couple of nice songs here as she bids adieu to Paramount in her next to last film for them.

When The Greatest Show on Earth came out and was doing great box office, Charlton Heston related a story that DeMille came over to him on the Paramount lot and gave him a newspaper clipping and said he would never get a better notice ever, no matter how long a career he had. Heston read the thing and the critic from some small town paper praised all the actors like Stewart, Wilde, Hutton, Grahame, and Lamour said they were great, but that C.B. DeMille must be the greatest director in the world to get a performance out of that circus ramrod.

For all of DeMille's faults here, he created a circus picture that set the standard for any to follow.