The Big Circus

Victor Mature plays a circus owner who splits from his partners and strikes out on his own. He’s broke. He needs a bank loan. The bank saddles him with an accountant played by Red Buttons, and a publicist played by Rhonda Fleming. Mature doesn’t want either one—especially not a woman publicist. But he’s got no choice.

Then the sabotage begins. Accidents. A death. Mature gets desperate and stages a tightrope walk across Niagara Falls for publicity.

That’s the setup for The Big Circus, a 1959 CinemaScope spectacle that misunderstands what makes the circus magical. We don’t go to see trapeze artists because we can’t watch acrobatics at home. We go to see them in person, to feel the danger, to gasp at the risk. This film gives us wide shots with obvious stunt doubles. The camera stays distant. The thrills stay distant too.

One sequence breaks the pattern. A lion taming act puts us inside the cage with tight shots and dynamic movement. You feel the danger. Why? Because it’s a real lion tamer, not Mature’s stunt double photographed from a quarter mile away.

The cast works overtime to compensate. Mature shows more life here than I’ve seen from him before. Peter Lorre plays a clown in full makeup and makes it feel natural. Vincent Price, with that magnificent baritone and towering frame, was born to be a ringmaster. Kathryn Grant channels Angie Dickinson and steals scenes from Fleming.

The production generally delivers. Real elephants. Real lions. Authentic circus sets. The film had money behind it.

Though you wouldn’t know it from the big Niagara Falls tightrope set piece. That’s clearly southern California, not upstate New York. Gilbert Roland walks across what’s obviously a rope on flat ground while stock footage of the falls plays behind him. The close-ups are laughable. Waist up of Roland with no background. Then cut to a waist down shot of a real wirewalker on a wire, again with no background. Then cut back to Roland from the waist up.

Who do they think they’re fooling?

Then again, this is a film that gives us lines like “It’s strange that the magic of the circus never touched me before,” delivered without irony, so perhaps I’m expecting too much.

But here’s the thing: it moves. The pacing keeps you engaged. The charisma of Lorre, Price, and even Mature carries you through the clunky dialogue and distant camerawork. It’s a B-picture that thinks it’s an A-picture, and the cast almost makes you believe it too.