Circus World (1964)

People are voting emotionally.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

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

"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" (1958), "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.

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.

I´m a big John Wayne Fan but this movie is very boring. John Wayne is acting like he thought the same in 1964. He is totally uninspired - like the whole movie is. 133 minutes and I fell asleep after 80 minutes. Endless scenes with animals, clowns and artists (one of them Rita Hayworth who looks like she will fall asleep every moment, too). In the beginning a ship is sinking and I thought I´m looking "Titanic" and in the end the circus tent is burning. But these scenes are without sense, only action - boring action. One of the movies of John Wayne you don´t need to see.