Circus World

I finally saw this film on you tube recently.It was very sharp excellent print.Unless my memory is fuzzy,I think I had saw it on television too,I had not seen it since I first saw it at the state theater in 65, in El Paso Texas.This was not a road show print .It was mono and regular scope.The Irony is we had the Capri theater that showed Cinerama ,but it did not premiered there.This later version ,I saw, a road show print ,restored from the Technirama original negative.It had intermission music , for some reason in mono sound.Enter Acte music and exit music.It was very entertaining,but not John Wayne's best.Some time the voices got out of sync .The Polka music in the Celebrating for getting the tent party,by Dimitri Tomkin,Sounded exactly like the same music used in the fair sequence in ,"Friendly Persuasion.This better print sounded a lot better than the theatrical mono print.The story is just fair ,not great.You never understood why the ship tipped over all of sudden.This was created to take advantage 8 Perf 35 mm Technirama wide film and for the effects of the artificial Cinerama presentation.Bronson believed in spectacle in his films ,but at the cost of common economical sense,which led to his downfall as a producer,when he began to loose money on his films.One thing is you never saw Purdey character at the Colonel Purdy's wild West show.You never know who sent that article about The Death of Toni Alfredo's father to Toni and who started the fire,Was it Conti's character?that was another problem in the film.In spite of it all it was still worth watching.Too bad a Blu- ray version wasn't available on the u.s. 09/11/16

In an effort to reignite success into his circus show, Matt Masters wants to tour in Europe. He also has a hidden motive behind this however, to find his old love and mother of stepdaughter Toni. Once he finds her, he comes to realize it's not only the circus he'll struggle with... I quite liked this movie. John Wayne is mostly seen as a macho western star, but once in a while he can also be subdued and sensitive. His character gets to deal with a lot of emotional difficulties throughout, and the inner pain is portrayed in his face very well. Rita Hayworth and Claudia Cardinale as his wife and daughter are just as great. I liked Hayworth in You'll Never Get Rich, and she didn't disappoint here either. The chemistry between her and Wayne is so believable that if you told me they got along just fine behind the scenes, I would have believed you. What's most interesting is how it portrays the relationship between Lili and Toni. Lili wants to connect with her daughter again, but constantly has to do it under the guise of being a complete stranger. Not to mention the potential emotional lashout Toni might suffer if she figures out the reason she really is there. Your father killing himself and mother then falling in love with your stepdad would definitely be a hard pill to swallow. The scene where Toni finds a note revealing what really happened to her father contains the finest acting moment in the whole picture. Her reaction to this is devastating, and Cardinale portrays the anger and hurt so convincingly it's scary. Matt understandly gets shocked, but was also prepared this might happen. Thankfully it ends on a sweet note as she and Lili come to Matt's rescue when his life is in danger. It's not just the drama that makes the movie however. It's also about a circus. Henry Hathaway directs these sequences with a clear affection for the art, since they are quite spectacular and entertaining to watch. I feel a bit mixed about the use of animals since it was hard not to worry about them getting hurt for real, but watching the performers and clowns doing their thing is a joy to behold. Imagine being a trapeze artist and trying to do 100 swings in the air! The energetic score by Dimitri Tiomkin does a good job of setting the circus atmosphere. As heavy as the story gets, there are also a few comedic moments. The funniest one for me is when Toni and Steve (The man she is in love with, but Matt has reportedly been antagonistic towards) are kissing each other, trying to hide from her father. But Steve is sick of sneaking around, and decides to tell Matt in a confronting manner that he genuinely loves her daughter and that he should stop treating him as an enemy. But since he is now in a good mood after Lili wants to stay, he gets the first word and happily asks Toni how her trapeze act is going, as well as tell them they can "go back your secret hiding place that nobody knows about". That final line is really what makes it. If you come for Wayne the action star you'll be disappointed, but if you want a well-acted drama with realistic and engaging characters you might get your value out of it. Along with The Barbarian And The Geisha this is one of his most underrated works.

. . . and it obviously was aimed at the impaired prostate crowd, with all of its entrance music (for last minute leaks), intermission scoring (for mid-stream relief), and exit tunes (for guys who just cannot wait another second). But CIRCUS WORLD star John Wayne chose his projects carefully (no, he's NOT the killer clown, as you might guess), and he was sharp enough to realize that if half the geezers with one foot in an old folks home Ponied up to see this flick, he'd be able to corner the market on Panamanian shrimp (which he did, in Real Life). If you told a bunch of screenwriters the plot of CIRCUS WORLD, they'd tell you that it would be a real stretch to pad out such thin material to as long as a 90-minute film. But "Il Duce" never had any truck with people who could communicate in complete sentences, so he stubbornly insists here upon chewing up a lot more than he bit off during a grueling 143 minutes. My party was laughing hysterically as Wayne's "Matt" character shinnies up to the peak of the Big Top to save "Lili" from an inferno. Because even if CIRCUS WORLD had been a million years longer, Matt would still be trying to get off the ground!

It's not an in depth look behind the scenes of a circus. But you will get to see a few things that you might not have known. The core is the story of Wayne and his family. His two families so to speak. It's nicely told, even if some things seem to happen just like that, without much of a problem (or the problem being resolved too easily). There are quite a few stunts on hand here and they are decent enough. Though sometimes when John Waynes character is doing risky things, it is so obviously not John Wayne but his stunt man, that it almost hurts. That is of course something that should not be a big problem. Or do not let it be one, if you can.

CIRCUS WORLD is a lavish bit of spectacle that acts as a nice showcase for John Wayne's naturalistic talents. He plays a circus owner who decides to bring his Wild West act to Europe with disastrous consequences, forcing him to go on a journey of self-realisation that sees him hooking up and making amends for his old life. I'm not a huge fan of circuses in cinema unless they're used for horror and suspense flicks, in which case they become a great setting (watch CIRCUS OF HORRORS and CIRCUS OF FEAR to see what I mean). However, Henry Hathaway shoots the Big Top very well here, and his circus scenes are filled with excitement. I can leave the cruel animal bits but the high wire acts are fantastic, the bits with the clowns are funny, and the Wild West show at the film's opening recalls BEN HUR-style spectacle. Wayne is the figure who holds this all together with a dauntless man-of-action performance. He's joined by a slightly tragic past-her-prime Rita Hayworth, who still impresses as his lost love, and Claudia Cardinale who is a vision of beauty as his adopted daughter. The film looks expensive and despite the slow pace it keeps you watching from beginning to end, never failing to entertain despite the odd shortcoming.

I acquired this via a boxed set of six Rita Hayworth films offered at a ridiculous price. Like the majority of boxed sets there were a couple of half-decent efforts - in this case Gilda, You'll Never Get Rich and The Lady From Shanghai, plus a couple of dogs. Circuses have never appealed to me, I can take or leave Duke Wayne and Claudia Cardinale; Lloyd Nolan is invariably good but he seldom if ever carried a film, and Rita was down to third billing so I didn't figure I was missing much. Now that I've finally seen it it's not as bas as it might have been, which is not the same as saying I'll watch it again. Rita arguably comes off best, not least in her early scenes where she plays a character who has lost her self-respect and more or less has to act as opposed to just looking glamorous. The plot dredges up just about every cliché there is, Richard Conte is wasted and that's about all there is to say.

One of the previous poster's referred to this NOT being a Cinerama film. He's right, it's not. However, he alludes to it having been advertised as such in some cities. Chicago was one of those. Circus World premiered in Chicago at the McVicker Theater on Madison just west of State. (That theater had previously screened How the West was Won, a TRUE Cinerama film. HTWWW ran there for what seemed to be a year before moving to the neighborhood theaters.) As stated, they had three screens to fill. The newspaper ads even used the Cinerama trademark, (the accordion folded logo). A friend saw it there with his parents, and all he talked about was the ship capsizing sequence. I saw the flick on TV, and, that seemed very anti-climactic. All in all a pretty underwhelming film. One big fluke, near the beginning, John Wayne is being wheeled around the circus ring on top of a stagecoach at full speed. He then shoots burning lamps (or something) off the tops of poles held by assistants in front of the stands full of spectators. Um, wouldn't the bullets being fired hit at least some of those folks behind the targets ? Maybe my memory isn't so good.

"Circus World" (1964), a grandiose Cinerama film directed by a Hollywood veteran Henry Hathaway, is a paradoxical case. The film was a big production, it had great stars, an acclaimed director, a highly appreciated screenwriter (Ben Hecht), and an even more celebrated writer behind the story (director Nicholas Ray), but yet the film has been, for the most part, forgotten. This is arguably justified since many do not feel that the film has the quality one might hope for. To my mind, the film's peculiarity is mainly due to its strange nature where the elegiac longing is combined with an extravagant approach. The story is very simple (an untold past tragedy casts its shadow on the present as a circus director, played by John Wayne, tries to create a successful show in Europe where he is reunited by his former lover, played by Rita Hayworth), but there's more than that to the film. By this I do not mean that Hathaway had elaborated a subtle subtext to the film in question or anything like that. I am merely talking about the art of history. First of all, "Circus World" is a film directed, written, and starred by old Hollywood legends. It was also made half a decade after the old studio system started to crumble. Many contemporary critics have later felt that films such as "The Searchers" (1956), "Rio Bravo" (1959), and "North by Northwest" (1959) were the last ones of a kind. "Circus World", on the other hand, is as though a posthumous legacy, in a somewhat similar sense as "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1961). Moreover, the film takes place in the early 20th century and dives into the nostalgic world of the circus which often represents a carefree existence of play and work (closely studied in the film of Federico Fellini, for one). While the historical setting seems to echo the film's own production time in this sense (reminiscing about the good old days before the world wars, semi-analogous to the good old days of Hollywood), the film's melancholic tone is further enhanced by the fates of its leading stars. It is well-known that "Circus World" was not only the last film John Wayne made before his lung cancer operation but also the first film where Hayworth's alleged Alzheimer's disease started acting up, causing numerous problems with production. It is as if everyone involved had been through their best days, inevitably casting an impact on the quality of the film in question as well, but still came together to perform in the wild circus world. This is why, in my opinion, the film's slow pace, effortlessly simple style, and naive story seem appropriate. It all seems to speak to the spectator on another level, so to speak. The film begins with emptiness and ends with fullness. "Circus World" is a film where an old world is softly breathing with modesty and ambition combined.

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.

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.