Shite. Utter shite.The best part of this movie was literally when it was over.
Ok. There were some other positives. The circus stunts and photography were amazing. Really incredible and you really got into the rivalry between the two trapeze artists. I mean you knew one of them was going to be horribly maimed at some point, and I must admit after the first half hour I was just begging for one of them to fall just to break up the monotony of the rest of the film – but still their work was impressive.
This is especially true because Cecile B. De Mille (aside from being a McCarthy loving rat) was apparently a bit of a ‘method’ director and insisted all his stars do their own stunts – which entailed all the leads learning highwire, trapeze and elephant training! Again, considering one of the male leads was terrified of heights, this is especially impressive to watch and does increase your involvement with those stunts.
But overall this completely deserves its reputation as the least deserving Best Picture Winner. Given the poor acting, the terrible script, the plodding plot line, the predictability and the overly long and pointless musical numbers we couldn’t understand why it had ever been nominated, let alone how it won! Then we did some research and discovered that De Mille was a loyal fan of McCarthy who was well and truly on his commie witch hunt at the time and the other films nominated that year all had some sort of connection to ‘black-listed’ writers, directors or producers.
As if McCarthy didn’t do enough damage – he had to destroy the Oscars as well! Nothing makes that clearer than the fact that 1952 saw the release of arguably the greatest (certainly one of the most enduring) movie musicals ever made, Gene Kelly and “Singing in the Rain”, but with a writer on the ‘black-list’ and directors leaving left (haha) right and centre ‘under suspicion’ it didn’t even rate a nomination.
By far the funniest moment came when Sebastian (the renegade trapeze artist) corners the young yet competitive ingénue, Holly on a haystack. In a scene seemingly ripped off completely from a Pepe Le Peau cartoon he whispers haltingly (in a terrible French accent), “The girl may say no, but the woman in you says yes”.
By far the most disappointing element was the climactic train crash (spoilers are ok because really, we don’t want anyone subjecting themselves to this thing – ever!) with lions and tigers on the loose through the wreckage and not a single person gets eaten! Or even nipped a little! And you’re seriously dying for someone to get eaten by that point! It just drove home what a fluff piece this was, the good ol’ American way of life and how it should be preserved for all.
On the upside, the lead male, Charlton Heston clearly inspired Steven Spielberg, whose father took him to see it (instead of taking him to a real circus!) and that bit of childhood disappointment resulted in the iconic image of Indiana Jones which I'm sure you can recognise from the poster pic of Charlton.
Overall, I scored it 33% and Mat, 32% making this the lowest scored Best Pic Winner to date, and dear god I don’t see how any could be worse!
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