Le plus grand cirque du monde

I watched this, for the first time since it was in theatres when I was 10, on YouTube in HD720 letterboxed at 2.20:1 on my internet-capable Blu-Ray player - the picture quality was outstanding. It was a different kind of role for Duke and, despite the obvious fact that it's not one of his or Hathaway's best, I found it enjoyable for a variety of reasons. Besides Wayne, there's Claudia Cardinale, John Smith whom I remembered from "Laramie" and one of my favorites, Lloyd Nolan. Not to mention Rita Hayworth. I enjoyed Jack Hildyard's beautiful photography and wish more films had been photographed in Technirama - it was such a versatile format, very high quality like VistaVision. I didn't let the picture's script shortcomings bother me - for my money (none!), they just didn't matter - or the probable fact that, if all it took to capsize a ship at the dock was a bunch of people rushing over to the side rail, it never would've survived an ocean crossing. Heck, it's make-believe, and it has ample verisimilitude to satisfy me. Just kick back and enjoy it.

Forget about John Wayne for a moment and in my opinion viewers should applaud the magnificent performance of Rita Hayworth and despite health problems holding the audience in the palm of her hand. She returns a disgraced woman to John Wayne's circus to reconcile herself with her daughter, played excellently by Claudia Cardinale. No more spoilers except to say that the scenes Hayworth have with Wayne, just after her return are gut wrenchingly moving. She shows her age proudly and seemingly without makeup, or the minimum, her beauty coming from within and without. Every second of her on the screen are moments of joyful appreciation that she took on the role. The scenes with her and Cardinale are also some of the best in cinema. This is a film worth buying even if like me circus films, and animals in cages are not appreciated in any sense. Of course there is a lot of excitement with a ship sinking, tent on fire etc and inevitably Wayne playing cowboy and killing off the indigenous population with fake gunfire in the circus ring. A very low point this but thankfully it is not in a real Western. His acting is also at a low point, but he too had health problems. To sum up it is for the two great women actors and it is their stories that count, and again in my view not the formula acts of the circus.

When you just enjoy an actor's gift, even a bad movie can be somewhat entertaining. I have seen many movies by John Wayne and some movies many, many times. I prefer the early westerns, war years films and even some of the appearances on The Tonight Show, Dean Martin Show and even the Roasts of the late '60's and '70's. As a matter of fact Wayne's movies dominate my collection of VHS and DVD. You a can always find bad movies in a list of an actor's work, especially when the actor has done over 150 movies in 50 years. Don't care what the policital views are. Just enjoy the film for what it is, a movie, not reality. Sit with a bowl of popcorn or gooey movie theater candy and enjoy a movie where you have to imagine rather than have thrilling stunts thrown at you every 35-45 seconds. Relax for a while.

Is The Magnificent Showman a good movie? Not really. Is it entertaining? In some ways, yes, but it also has a number of problems. As far as John Wayne go, The Magnificent Showman is not among the best like The Searchers, Fort Apache and The Quiet Man. But he has also done worse in his career as seen(in my opinion that is) with The Conqueror, Brannigan and The Green Berets. In fact, it probably belongs somewhere in the middle.

I did very much like how The Magnificent Showman looked. The cinematography, effects, costumes and sets/scenery are amazingly effective. There are also some scenes that hold up well and entertain, particularly worth of note are the climatic fire and the capsizing of the circus ship, both scenes are full of excitement and tension.

The Magnificent Showman was begun as Circus World, directed by Frank Capra. As much as I very much like Capra and his films, Henry Hathaway, who the film was later entrusted to, in my view was much more suitable for the job. And while there are some assets that don't work as well as they should, Hathaway does deserve credit for directing as solidly as he did.

Aside from the cinematography, effects and set pieces, the other outstanding asset is Dmitri Tiomkin's score, which is energetic, beautiful, haunting and rousing as it should be. And while I wasn't that impressed really with the acting, two performances do stand out- Rita Hayworth and Claudia Cardinale. Hayworth is captivating and Cardinale is a sheer delight. Together they are even better, here they seem to be having a contest at who's the best at upstaging the other, and it is a lot of fun to watch. Just for the record, I think Cardinale just about wins the contest.

These aside, I was divided personally on the performance of John Wayne. I do like Wayne a lot, but I wasn't sure about him here. What I did like was his charisma, Wayne was a very charismatic actor and that comes loud and clear here. However, for my liking his delivery of the lines seemed rather stiff and there were times where I couldn't help thinking he was too old for the role.

The film is too long, at 133 minutes it is very lengthy. This wouldn't have mattered so much if the pace and story were good, sadly neither were as solid as I would have liked. There are a fair number of exciting scenes that do elevate the story, but the more talky and slower moments are rather sluggish. The story had a great concept to work from, but the final result seemed rather over-stuffed and cobbled together, also some plot points could have been better developed. But my main gripe was the dialogue, some of which was really quite bad being very clichéd and silly.

All in all, entertaining enough but has a lot of flaws that stop it from being any more than that. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Worth seeing for the odd pairing of John Wayne and Rita Hayworth. They actually interact well but Rita's part is minor considering her star status, by this point she was beginning to really suffer with memory loss and her scenes were a trial to complete, and the story is weak. Claudia is lovely but totally unbelievable as Duke's daughter speaking with her natural Italian accent while supposedly being raised by him, he of course talks like John Wayne. Not a terrible film but diffuse and without a strong point of view, that may be because the production was fraught with issues, begun by Frank Capra and finished by Henry Hathaway there was no clear vision to the shape what the film was supposed to offer.