***/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour
screenplay by Fredric M. Frank, Barré Lyndon and Theodore St. John
directed by Cecil B. DeMille
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is pretty close to being the Biggest Crock on Film. A lame assortment of soapy intrigues, bloated set-pieces, and garish colours, it's calculated to alienate the highbrows and haunt Guy Debord's nightmares. Some allege that it's the worst film ever to win the Best Picture Oscar, a hard claim to challenge no matter how unquantifiable the distinction. But while The Greatest Show on Earth is aimed squarely at those loathsome people who speak of films as "rollercoaster thrill-rides," there's no denying that it was made with a zesty vulgarity and executed with loving care. It's professional in both senses of the word: too much of a static thing to have artistic merit, yet big fun to watch as a well-engineered Rube Goldberg vehicle captained by Jack Smith across a field of giant marshmallows.
The show in question is the vast spectacle known as the Ringling Bros./Barnum and Bailey circus. Captaining this vessel is rock-jawed Bill Braden (Charlton Heston), a man's-man eager to pilot his "glittering world of sawdust and popcorn" across America, much to the chagrin of weak-kneed backers. Bill hires famed acrobat The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde) to fatten the bill and soothe any financial worries, but this puts him in the black books with his girl Holly (an absurdly miscast Betty Hutton), who had counted on the headline spot for herself. Luckily, Sebastian and Holly make a terrific team, even if they take predictable unnecessary risks. Soon the caravan is rattling across the continental United States, encountering–when these performers can squeeze personal matters in the crevices between the acts that are their bread and butter, that is–heartache, injury, jealousy, and Jimmy Stewart as a clown with a past.
The film is aware of its duty to thrill you, going so far as to show trace elements of self-reflexivity. It's consciously about putting on a show, tenuously setting itself in the same genre as Jean Renoir's French Cancan and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes: The Greatest Show on Earth is likewise about the trade-offs between life and art and the compromises/sacrifices made for the honour of being in the limelight. Unlike those films, however, it's not very smart about such things. Where Renoir explored the social strata dividing his theatre and Powell & Pressburger reveal the seeds of self-destruction latent within artistic devotion, DeMille is sure that everything will work out fine assuming you let the captain guide the ship. Heston is the stand-in for a director (excuse me, "master showman"), bull-headedly smashing through obstacles to ensure that the Big Top rises and everything goes off as planned. It's not a labour of love so much as a triumph of the will–the show must go on or face penalty of death, and so everybody involved subordinates themselves to the pleasure of others.
Fortunately, we're the others. We get a heaping plate of dopey spectacle to make us forget; although I've never been particularly entranced by the actual Big Top, this virtual one is more lavish and beautiful than any real circus and things happen with greater aesthetic precision. DeMille pulls out all the stops in showing off his cast of thousands and his expensive production values, and he's pretty sharp in staying out of the way of the trapeze numbers. Even the manipulative editing, designed to mask the fact that the star players aren't really doing the stunts, is seamless enough to aestheticize the blatant use of stand-ins. If the plot merely serves as one more high-wire act, with people taking their places and doing the rehearsed moves, you can at least take comfort in the familiarity and laugh at the outrageousness of the con. And it is a con–a vast, industrial-strength insult to your intelligence. Somehow you still want to know what surreal whopper it'll come up with next in its attempt to justify its bloated kitsch; watching The Greatest Show on Earth unfold is the guiltiest pleasure on DVD.
THE DVD
Paramount's DVD presentation of The Greatest Show on Earth is none too shabby. The 1.33:1 transfer, purportedly struck from the original three-strip elements, looks supremely lustrous, with superb saturation of the Technicolor hues. Fine detail is excellent as well. As for the Dolby 2.0 mono sound, it's perhaps a little faint, though not enough to cause any big headaches for the listener. Despite the title's prestige, there are no extras on this disc.
152 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono), French DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Paramount
