Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 139: Oh What a Circus

Some critics are so harsh because I recently came over several lists which ranked the worst Oscar winners of all time and in the Top 5 of most of these lists was the latest film I watched - The Greatest Show on Earth. To give you a little background the film is Cecile B De Mille's circus-set extravaganza and is based around the Bingling Bros., Barnum and Bailey Circus. Charlton Heston plays circus manager Brad Braden who is trying to convince his bosses to give the circus another full season and to entice them he has hired famous acrobat and well known lothario The Great Sebastian. After agreeing to hiring Sebastian and getting a full season Brad has to deal with the fact that his acrobat girlfriend Holly will be bumped from the centre stage although she claims she will one-up Sebastian so the audience focuses on them. Throughout the film  a love triangle develops with Sebastian enchanting Holly with his risky attitude and his competitive spirit while Brad is more focused on getting the circus working. After Sebastian and Holly get together another performer Ginger goes after Brad but this infuriates her lover Klauss who vows to get revenge. James Stewart also appears in the film as Buttons the Clown, Buttons has an intriguing story where he never takes off his make-up clues throughout the story lead us to believe that he was a surgeon who mercy killed his own lover and is on the run from the police. During one of the journeys on the circus train a disgraced former employee along with the jealous Klauss plan to rob the train but Klauss has a change of heart when he realises he may hurt Ginger and there is a massive train crash. Brad is injured and with the Doctor unconscious Buttons operates on him but is caught by an FBI investigator who knows his suspect is somewhere in the circus after saving Brad's live Buttons is carted off to jail while Holly realises she loves Brad and Ginger and Sebastian decide to be together.

I have to say of the Best Pictures I have watched so far The Greatest Show on Earth is definitely not the worst but at the same time not the best. It does have some good points for one it is incredibly realistic with 1,400 members of the actual circus troupe starring alongside the actors accompanied by the whole ring set-up crew and a menagerie of animals. The film also lapses into documentary at times with De Mille providing a voiceover at various points to illustrate how hard it is to deconstruct and erect the tent each day and how hard the travel is on the performers. Heston provides a great leading man while the James Stewart story is very compelling and I wish I'd seen more of it while the camerawork for the most part is done well especially when focusing on the audience reactions. However at the same time it is far too long and there is no reason at all that we needed to see entire parts of some of the acts. While the acrobatics acts are pivotal to the plot everything else could be just viewed in clip form and this is one of De Mille's main problems. In addition Betty Hutton is a bit of a damp squib as Holly and Cornel Wilde is almost too much as the exotic lover Sebastian. I also didn't really get the motivation for Klaus' momentary change of heart which caused the train crash. The theory is that this film won the Oscar because of De Mille's Hollywood pull and the fact that this would be his last chance to win a Best Picture Statuette. Overall the film is spectacular but it needs about 45 minutes cut from it to make it truly memorable film.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 124: It Happened One Night

At the 1948 Oscar ceremony the winner was Gentleman's Agreement a film all about prejudice against Jews and the next film in the list and fellow nominee Crossfire also deals with similar themes. Crossfire begins with a fight between two men we don't see their faces but one is a soldier and the other man, Samuels, gets beaten to death and it's up to Robert Young's police Captain Finlay to find out who did it. The original suspect is Mitchell who was drinking with Samuels and came back to his apartment but when Mitchell's superior Keeley comes back he gets a different story from him. Mitchell tells him that he ended up at a bar where he met a young woman, Ginny, and ended up letting himself into her apartment after she gave him the key. When he woke up he found a man there, later revealed to be her ex-husband, and left only to find the police waiting for him and retreating to a local movie theatre. After conducting interviews Finlay realises that the only motive for Samuels murder is one of hate and because he is a Jew. Finlay finds out Mitchell didn't know of Samuels' Jewish background but fellow soldier Montgomery was also on the scene and mentioned it a few times. After Montgomery kills the other soldier who knows about the murder, Finlay tracks him down and shoots him as he tries to escape.

At first I found Crossfire a bit irritating it introduced new characters far too quickly for my liking and it was also hard to tell them apart as they were all in army uniform. However I did come to appreciate the little touches such as the use of shadow and the non-linear narrative. We are given two versions of events firstly Montgomery's account of what happened which he gives to Finlay and the second is Mitchell's testimony to Keeley which is shot in the movie theatre the only light present in this scene coming from the screen. Unlike Gentleman's Agreement, Crossfire is never particularly preachy about prejudice apart from in one scene when Finlay tells one of the soldiers about how is grandfather was killed just because he was from an Irish background. In terms of the acting Robert Ryan is particularly convincing as the evil Montgomery and Paul Kelly is also particularly sinister as Ginny's ex-husband and Roberts Young and Mitchum hold the whole thing together. But the best performance, and the only Oscar nominated one, in the cast comes from Gloria Grahame as Ginny the girl who has been chatted up by more men than she cares to explain and just wants out of that life. Overall a very enjoyable crime story that has a strong narrative and some memorable characters.