Carnival Story

I could not help but compare this film to her earlier work "All About Eve", not because it was similar but because it was the first film I had seen her in since viewing "AAE". I was looking for the same great performances from her, and on occasions I was satisfied, yet the rest of the cast WAS NOT on the same page as her! She out-shined them all, which I admit was not that hard to do in this lack luster, poor, foreign film about United States Carnivals...and of course the typical stereo typing of the so called freaks prevailed... Still, I read another viewers comments on the film and I have to agree, it was rather odd of Anne's character, who was in fact, a Black Widow if you looked close enough... See it for Anne and Steve Cochran if not for the exploitation of Carnies....

Carnival Story is flat melodrama of an American travelling circus in post war Germany. Willi (Anne Baxter) is a destitute German girl who picks the pocket of Joe (Steve Cochran) who works for the travelling circus. He seems kind hearted enough and gets her a job in the circus and she falls for Joe. However Frank (Lyle Bettger) a talented high dive act, teaches Willi to dive and both become a sensation in the show. Frank proposes marriage to Willi who accepts. Joe turns heel, he is nonchalant that she is marrying Frank, telling her that he can still have her after she has married. The trouble is Willi against her better judgment always carried a torch for bad boy Joe and then Frank dies in a suspicious accident, soon after he got into a fight with Joe over him creeping around his wife. The film is rather sluggish and the direction is rather workmanlike with its colour badly faded. It takes an age to get going and it is hard to like Willi who seems fatally attracted to sleazy Joe.

In many ways this is a strange film with Anne Baxter being the black widow of sorts. The screen seems to come alive only when she is on screen with Cochran. The plot is very simplistic and the characters not well developed and are even contradictory. However, any film with them in it is worthy of viewing. Maybe a better script would have enhanced this film.

A movie equivalent of one of those 1950s gaudy crime paperbacks, this low budget effort starts down a familiar path but is still able to provide its share of suspense and surprises. The lovely Anne Baxter, though a long way from ALL ABOUT EVE is an attractive heroine albeit with an accent that has a tendency to disappear at times. She obtains work in the carnival through Joe (Steve Cochran)whose pocket she has picked out of desperation and then becomes a partner of Lyle Bettger in a high-dive act. This is an intriguing start as Bettger often played sneering villains and Joe seems decent enough at first, though we soon learn that this is not the case. Steve Cochran was ideal in this sort of role. There is an incredibly similar sequence featuring a high-diver who jumps into a blazing tank in a section of the British film ENCORE, released two or three years before, which may have given the makers of this film some ideas.

Anne Baxter is channeling her 'inner Joan Crawford' at every key scene of this lively B-Movie time waster. Carnival Girl Joan was a natural for this - a shame she was too old. Those looks of blazing hatred and the words Baxter spits out at Steve Cochran (when she's not grinding all over him) need some serious eyebrows and shoulder pads. To be honest I watched this from start to finish and never felt the urge to turn it off. Many a 'great' movie I've left half finished. This is pure B movie and certainly not great but the story hooks keep it moving from scene to scene. I should have seen the ending a mile away but didn't bother to look for it. That male high diving husband wore the CREEPIEST bathing suit I have ever seen on a man. I never saw the actor before but he was oddly sexless, effeminate and unsettling. There is one scene when he is having his blond locks lovingly styled by a midget that belongs in a Bunuel movie.