A CIRCUS MANAGER’S HIGH-WIRE GIRLFRIEND FALLS FOR A FRENCHAERIALIST. OSCAR FOR BEST PICTURE.The Greatest Show on Earth is a heaping helping of flapdoodle served up by one of Hollywood’s canniest entertainers: producer-director Cecil B. DeMille. This overripe melodrama purports to be life inside the Ringling Brothers Circus; maybe it’s not, but the circus ought to be like this. The actors wrestling with the purple dialogue are: early-career Charlton Heston, as the tough-as-nails circus manager; Cornel Wilde and Betty Hutton as trapeze artistes; and Gloria Grahame (who won an Oscar), dangling from elephants. Best of all, James Stewart plays a clown who–for mysterious reasons–never removes his makeup. (Stewart took the supporting role simply because he’d always wanted to play a clown.) This is a fried-baloney sandwich of a movie: it ain’t sophisticated, and probably isn’t good for you, but once you start you can’t stop. It was the box-office champ of 1952, and it shocked everybody by winning the best picture Oscar. –Robert Horton
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March 21, 2010
#1
It’s tough to know which is worse in this film: the directing, the script or the actors. Betty Hutton (who ever told this woman she could act???) plays all her scenes as if she were on the stage of the Radio City Music Hall: shouting and grimacing. Charlton Heston is slightly better altho he seems to be tortured and constipated. Cornell Wilde simply smirks. The extras and day players are just as awful as the principals. Is it possible to rate a film LESS than one star?
March 21, 2010
#2
For me, this movie already had two strikes against it before I even started watching it: Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston. I’ve always thought DeMille movies were overproduced, empty spectacles, and that Heston performances were overripe, empty caricatures. Well, both men were true to form in this story about the conflicts behind the scenes at a travelling circus. Heston snarls and orders people around as the circus manager, the object of the affections of Betty Hutton, aerial star, and Gloria Grahame, elephant trainer. Enter Cornel Wilde, the hotblooded French aerial star, and things get complicated (not really … the story never gets that deep). Jimmy Stewart stars as a clown with a mysterious past (I’m not kidding about that), and Dorothy Lamour is … well … I’m not actually sure what her purpose was in the film, other than to badly lip synch a few songs. Other than Stewart, who in all honesty could read the dictionary and make it interesting, the performances are pretty bad. But then again, saddled with such lousy cliched dialogue, there probably wasn’t much they could do. Yet although I seem to be trashing this film a lot, it was entertaining somehow. The circus spectacle is colourfully presented, and if you just accept the plot, dialogue, and acting for what they are – products of the DeMille “touch”, it is mindlessly fun. That may not be glowing praise, but like I said, for a film that already had two strikes against it in my book, I was expecting worse.
March 21, 2010
#3
Did not receive any response or DVD from dvdlegacy. Amazon is great. After sending 2 emails to the sponsor Amazon promptly refunded my money and removed dvdlegacy from their list. It really pays to read the ratings before placing an order. I will continue to use Amazon as their customer service is fantastic.
March 21, 2010
#4
Received this DVD in a timely manner. I haven’t played it yet, but it looks to be in excellent condition.
March 21, 2010
#5
Under the category of “What Were They Thinking?” you could find a reference to Best Picture Oscar going to this goofy movie while “High Noon” (or even “The Quiet Man”) went unrecognized. It was a surprise back when it happened, and half a century later it strikes most of us as an absolute travesty.
All of the worst tendencies of DeMille’s films — noisy excess coupled with unbelievably cheesy dialogue — are on ample display here. The dialogue is truly unbearable at times — one wonders how some of the cast were able to get through their scenes without losing control. It doesn’t help that more than a few of the characters are extremely annoying — it becomes difficult for the viewer to invest anything emotionally in characters one cannot stand.
I only wish I could state with certainty that this was the worst ever Best Picture winner, but unfortunately there are other films (Titanic anyone?) that could give “The Greatest Show on Earth” a good run for its money.