Oscars Retrospective: The Greatest Show on Earth (25th Academy Awards Review)

  

Prelude March~Victor Young - The Greatest Show on Earth

Cecil B. DeMille is one of the most fascinating figures in movie history, whose life spanned the full gamut of the Golden Age of Hollywood. DeMille was born in 1881, early enough that his playwright father was part of the Golden Age of American Theater, being on a first-name basis with Edwin Booth. (For context on why this is a big deal, Edwin Booth was considered the greatest actor of the American theater in the 19th century (though he, ironically, now exists in the historical shadow of his pathetic baby brother, John Wilkes, whose biggest accomplishment in life was shooting someone and then getting set on fire).) As DeMille grew up, he became involved in the theater world, eventually grew bored and joined forces with a couple of other East Coast businessmen to go out West and get involved in those new-fangled movies that everyone was making.

DeMille made his directorial debut in The Squaw Man (1914), the movie that, along with D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1917), essentially founded Hollywood as we know it. Unlike Griffith and almost every other director of his time period, DeMille proved surprisingly resilient to the changes that rocked the industry time and again and was able to adapt his style to the numerous changes that took place over the course of his life. He started his career as a touring actor and director during the height of American theater then switched to movies with ease. Well, what about when the movies start to talk? He’ll make his talk too. What if they need to start being in color? No biggie. DeMille would continue his prolific output until he passed away in 1959, right on the cusp of the Hollywood New Wave revolution. If there’s anyone who really defined Hollywood as a person, this guy was it.

We’ve discussed DeMille a few times on this series, always under the Success or Snub category, as he didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Picture until 1952. Considering how much studio politics rule the Academy Awards decisions and how important this guy was in town, this is pretty surprising, though I think a bit more context may be needed. DeMille was what you would call an entertainment auteur. Modern equivalents would be directors like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Christopher Nolan or James Cameron. These are directors whose films are more crowd-pleasers than critic-pleasers, directors who are true masters over their visual style which mitigates their tendency to pick/write occasionally clumsy scripts. And, just like Spielberg or Cameron, DeMille was never quite respected by many of the haughtier critics of his day and often seen as giving more of a spectacle than a story.

Whether or not DeMille was entirely style over substance is debatable. DeMille’s bread and butter were Biblical epics such as King of Kings (1927), Samson and Delilah (1950) and The Ten Commandments (1923) which he would eventually remake (1956) and when you’re making movies about the foundation of your entire faith, it’s pretty hard to argue that you’re in it just for pleasing the crowds and not saying anything worthwhile. Of course, not all of his movies were Biblical epics and, like all directors, some of his movies were better than others. That brings us to The Greatest Show on Earth, DeMille’s love letter to the circus and what is often considered to be one of his worst films (by people who never sat through Unconquered (1947)) as well as one of the worst, if not the worst, movies to have ever won the Academy Award for Best Picture (by people who never sat through Cavalcade (1933)).

Upon seeing the movie, Billy Wilder remarked that "That was certainly The Greatest Show on Earth." DeMille was the type of peson who did not realize that this wasn't a positive review.

The Greatest Show on Earth is set in a traveling circus based largely on the famous Barnum & Bailey circus (in fact, most of the sets and extras were loaned from Barnum & Bailey). The core story is a love triangle between the ringmaster, Brad Braden (Charlton Heston), the trapeze artist, Holly (Betty Hutton) and the new trapeze artist who’s threatening to take her spotlight, Sebastian the Great (Cornel Wilde who caused difficulties on set due to his fear of heights; Wilde’s agent was clearly not a very smart man). Other major characters who interact with our leads include Buttons (James Stewart), a clown with a mysterious past that he’s running away from, Angel (Gloria Grahame), one of Sebastian’s ex-lovers who performs in the elephant act and a pair of mooks (Lyle Bettger and John Kellogg) who work for an evil businessman (Lawrence Tierney) that wants to ruin the circus.

We’ll get back to the story in a minute but, first, let’s focus on the good points because there are a few. Particularly the spectacle. In terms of just putting on a show, nobody could do it like DeMille and he never lost his touch. The Greatest Show on Earth has a quasi-documentary aspect to it where the movie takes you through the step-by-step process of how a circus show is put on. They show the train pulling into its stop, the big top being put up, the props being loaded, people practicing their acts, taking down the big top, loading it back onto the train and repeating the process all over again at the next town. In case you’re wondering why this movie is close to 3 hours long, it’s because they set aside a lot of running time just to show the whole thing. This part is genuinely fascinating to watch though it does, of course, sweeten it up a bit as, speaking as someone who’s worked in event staffing for a long time, I’m sure the actual construction of a big top could be filled with a lot more grumbling, long days, injuries and deaths than portrayed.

Up next is the actual greatest show on Earth which is, once again, excellent. The circus as America knew it 100 years ago has long since died out so this movie does offer an interesting time capsule. Granted, DeMille didn’t block a whole new sequence so much as he just instructed some stunt performers to do their typical circus tricks and pointed some cameras at it but it’s still great fun to watch. The main highlight is the trapeze act, both because it’s where the build-up is but also because it’s insane to think that real people actually did this back in the day for our entertainment.

If you ever wanted to see a circus performance, this movie serves as a good substitute.

The final standout scene is the train crash that sets up the last act of the movie. Once again, the special effects in this scene are excellent, so much so that you honestly forget that this was all done with miniatures in the 1950s. After the fun glitz of the show, this sequence does succeed at being quite intense by contrast and making you wonder what will happen next. (Fun fact: watching this scene as a child is apparently what made Steven Spielberg fall in love with movies. So much so that he paid tribute to it in Super 8 (2011) and showcased the story of his being obsessed with the scene in his quasi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans (2022).)

That is about all there is good to say about The Greatest Show on Earth. In case you couldn’t tell, this is one of those movies where you can instantly and accurately predict each and every character’s fate at the end within the first 5 minutes of their introduction. The bad guys will die, both men will get the right girl, the mystery of Buttons the Clown’s past barely qualifies as one and nothing will stop the circus from falling apart. This is another argument about film criticism that we can toy around with a bit, that being how much predictability can ruin a film. What’s the line between when something becomes “been there, done that” versus “yeah that’s a little clichéd but I don’t mind?”

I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t really matter how clichéd the story is. I mean, for Christ’s sake, if you like watching old movies that invented most of these clichés you kinda have to have that opinion, don’t you? What’s more important is how fun the story and especially the characters are. For example, in most of the Universal monster movies, we know that the hero is going to face an evil monster, save a damsel from certain death, the monster will die and we’ll all learn some lesson about not playing with science/the Occult. But what makes certain movies better than others is how they play with the formula: what kind of monster, what kind of hero, what kind of settings they get into etc.

Bringing it back to The Greatest Show on Earth, what makes it bad isn’t the fact that it has a love triangle or has villains who have no motivations other than just wanting to be evil; what makes it bad is that none of them are interesting. No depth, no memorable lines, nothing for the actors to chew on to make for fun performances. The only exception is James Stewart as Buttons the Clown and that’s mostly because it’s James Stewart but also because Buttons is the only character with any depth. By contrast, even great imperious actors like Charlton Heston and Lawrence Tierney are completely forgettable.

Now’s probably also a good time to mention that, like many other entertainment auteur directors, the dialogue in DeMille’s movies is usually pretty cheesy. After having finally read a biography of DeMille and learning that he was a student of the theater, even more so than any other director in Hollywood at the time, everything about his style kinda clicks into place. He loved the spectacle and recreating the feeling of making the audience woosh in their seats. He loved his wide frames where you can see the full mise-en-scene, recreating the look of a large show on the stage. And what he also loved were his long soliloquies where the actors seem to be playing more to the audience and going for cheap laughs than actually acting like they’re having a real conversation with another person.

This is another weird mystery of how movies work where I think it’s more noticeable in The Greatest Show on Earth due to its modern setting. Having a movie set in Biblical times or ancient Egypt gives it a panache that allows this sort of theatrical style of dialogue to flow better. These are stories that are as old as the theater itself and, thus, we the audience associate them with a theatrical style. Something that’s closer to the modern day like Unconquered and The Greatest Show on Earth feels a lot phonier by comparison. It also doesn’t help that, for this movie, DeMille dropped one of his longtime screenwriters who usually punched up his scripts.

Also, as long as we’re touching on problems, The Greatest Show on Earth has one of the most painful and cringeworthy scenes in movie history. I can’t find it on YouTube but it depicts the trademarked characters on parade during the show and has a middle-aged man with male pattern baldness freaking out over seeing Mickey Mouse in the most embarrassing display of fanboyism this side of Beatlemania. The gag is that his kid is embarrassed by his dad being excited about Mickey Mouse. It’s not even remotely funny and completely sucks you out of the moment of seeing the circus show. It’s one of those great terrible, cringe-inducing movie scenes that's fascinating to watch. This bit had to be scripted, casted, seen by many different eyes, acted out for a few takes, edited and no one at any point in that process thought that it might be a good idea to keep it out of the movie.

If you've ever wanted to experience a circus performance, the idea that this guy might be there will change your mind.

So, yes, The Greatest Show on Earth is definitely not a good movie. There’s not even really any point or moral to it. When you see where the plot resolves itself and the lesson the characters try to shove down our throat, it does not at all match the journey we just went on. The reasons why The Greatest Show on Earth won are as labyrinthine as you would think but, for now, let’s close off this blog by answering the question: is this actually the worst movie to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture?

I’m personally going to say no as it ultimately doesn’t have a truly vile moral (unlike The Broadway Melody (1929)) and it is ultimately somewhat entertaining (unlike Cavalcade). The actual spectacle and circus show is very well done and should be acknowledged. That almost would be enough to recommend it as an “enjoyable camp” movie if it wasn’t for the biggest flaw of them all: that being how long and bloated it is. This movie is 3 Goddamned hours and you will be feeling most of it.

The Greatest Show on Earth honestly would’ve been better off if DeMille just did a documentary on the circus but his desire to shoehorn a blasé story into it is what kills it. Even if you think that DeMille’s films were always style over substance and too much cheesy dialogue, most of his great movies had a core story that was still beating beneath the scale. Cleopatra (1934) had a good core story. Reap the Wild Wind (1940) had a good core story. The Ten Commandments had a great core story. The Greatest Show on Earth did not.

But, hey, maybe that’s just me?

In case you missed it:

1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2

2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2

3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2

4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2

5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2

6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2

7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2

8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2

9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2

10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2

11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2

12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2

13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2

14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2

15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2

16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2

17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2

18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2

19th Academy Awards (1946): The Best Years of Our Lives: Part 1, Part 2

20th Academy Awards (1947): Gentleman's Agreement: Part 1, Part 2

21st Academy Awards (1948): Hamlet: Part 1, Part 2

22nd Academy Awards (1949): All The King's Men: Part 1, Part 2

23rd Academy Awards (1950): All About Eve: Part 1, Part 2

24th Academy Awards (1951): An American in Paris: Part 1, Part 2