by Chris Marshall:
The Greatest Show on
Earth is definitely not great, and I’m not entirely convinced it took place
on Earth. The circus is a bizarre, frightening place that shares only the most
basic similarities with our planet; it is populated by humans, some of which
look like people you’ve actually seen before in your life. Most do not.
1952’s Best Picture winner allows you to spend over two and
a half hours with this collection of life forms, and I, at least, did not feel
particularly enriched for having done so. The whole thing takes place within
the confines of a traveling circus. While some children may dream of running
away and joining circus, I wanted nothing more than to run away from the circus
itself and never go back.
The best I can tell, the movie is just an excuse to show various
unrelated circus acts in glorious Technicolor, but there is a main story
holding everything together (very loosely). There’s a love triangle—just like
every other Oscar winner, it seems like—except this one is a little different
because it involves Charlton Heston[1]
and two trapeze artists. Everything was going fine between Brad (Heston) and
Holly until The Great Sebastian, the world’s premiere trapeze act, joined the
tour. But Sebastian, quite typically for a Frenchman, ruined everything.
Sebastian manages to antagonize everybody he meets. First,
he steals Holly’s position as the number one act, and then he steals her heart
away from Brad. Charlton Heston plays this role just like every other role he
ever had. Yes, I know that stars don’t have to act, they just have to be, but when it’s impossible to
distinguish Brad, Judah Ben-Hur, and Soylent
Green’s Robert Thorn, that’s not really a good thing.
So if you’re at all familiar with Heston’s work, you’ll know
this means he’s only about two seconds away from snapping and killing
everybody, which is fine for some of his movies but doesn’t work so well here
for the supposedly level-headed Brad. Sure, The Great Sebastian deserves
everything that’s coming to him, but our hero is supposed to have at least a
little decorum.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the weirdest part of
this film, which is the appearance of Jimmy Stewart. We last saw him in 1938,
when he was doing spectacular things in You Can’t Take It With You. Here, he is a clown. He is a clown who never
appears without his makeup on. In fact, the only way you can even tell it’s him
is his unmistakable voice, which he does nothing to de-emphasize. It’s all very
peculiar.
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| Stewart as Pennywise in Stephen King's It |
The last half of the movie involves a battle for supremacy
between Holly and Sebastian, as both keep doing more and more death-defying
stunts to prove they belong in the center ring. Mix in a little bit of a freak
show and some celebrity cameos (Bob Hope and our old friend Bing Crosby appear
briefly in the crowd), and you have the entirety of The Greatest Show on Earth.
It has all the trappings of a Cecil B. DeMille picture: it’s
big, bold, and expensive. Unfortunately, it appears that Hollywood was going
through a phase where they associated all these things with being good. Sometimes, of course, they are.
But other times, spectacle takes the place of substance. This falls into the
latter category.
I don’t think my feelings are biased because I’ve often
heard this referred to as the worst Best Picture winner. I really do think it’s
quite bad. But it’s not the worst winner; I doubt anything will ever match The Great Ziegfeld[2]
in that category. That being said, I would avoid this movie, unless you’re a
completionist like me. Everybody involved in this production (except maybe the
trapeze artists) did better work in their careers. You can do better than watch
this, too.
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