Acro-Batty

Acro-Batty (1942)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent short from Pete Smith takes a look at some circus performers on their vacations. Of course, even on their vacations they must practice their stunts so we get to see various types of training that they do. This includes several high wire/bar acts, a trampoline act where they also jump rope, several high dive acts and various other dangerous stunts. If you're familiar with the work of Smith then you know that the majority of his shorts are part documentary and part satire as Smith also likes to add jokes with his narration. For the most part this is a mildly entertaining short thanks in large part to the dangerous stunts that we get to see performed. I'm not one who typically enjoys these circus acts but at just 9-minutes this here was worth sitting through. The majority of Smith's jokes didn't really work but he always has that great delivery that at least doesn't make them annoying.

Practicing on the trapeze without a safety net won't get you to Carnegie Hall, but it will keep you in shape for the next season with the circus. This typically good Pete Smith short subject shows circus acrobats on their vacation time -- not in Sarasota Florida, which is where circus people are usually to be found, but a bunch who take their time off on Southern California.

There are lots of well composed long shots to give you the full effect and some slow-motion sequences of acrobats leaping over teams of horses, stagecoaches and similar obstacles, as well as one showing an acrobat taking a deliberate fall of a hundred feet -- that last was into a safety net.

Although the now standard way to shoot acrobats was set a decade later with DeMille's THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, this emphasizes the difficulty of the stunts better.