IMDb user comments for
Circus World (1964)

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13 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
We Are Talking International Showtime, 29 mayo 2005
Author: bkoganbing de Buffalo, New York

I remember seeing this film as a lad on a family outing in Manhattan, topped off by my insistence that we have dinner at Jack Dempsey's Restaurant in Manhattan. Too bad the old champ wasn't there that day or it would have been a perfect Sunday.

Seeing it now on a formatted VHS the awesomeness of the spectacle during the scenes of the circus fires and the capsized ship in the harbor is really lost. It's quite an eyeful and should only be scene in theaters.

And the film would be revived, but we have a subdued John Wayne here and it's not for the better.

This was originally to be a Frank Capra film and Capra bowed out after creative differences with the Duke and some of the Duke's personal entourage. Read the Capra autobiography to find out exactly what they were, but they weren't fully fixed in the final product by director Henry Hathaway who later piloted the Duke to his Oscar in True Grit.

John Wayne was a guy who was usually very careful to give the public the Duke they expected. Even when he stretched his abilities it was done with a firm directorial hand.

We're asked to accept the Duke as a man who had an adulterous affair here. He also does not throw one punch in this entire film or fire a weapon in other than it being part of his Wild West Show. The people went to see John Wayne, but they didn't get their money's worth.

Pity because it would have been great to see John Wayne with Rita Hayworth in a great film. That couldn't have happened when they were younger because of Rita's contract with Columbia pictures and Wayne's personal boycotting of that studio because of his dislike for Harry Cohn. That story I won't go into.

Rita Hayworth who doesn't enter into the film until almost halfway through is fine as Wayne's lost love. She and Claudia Cardinale looked just fine in tights as trapeze artists. Lloyd Nolan as Wayne's sidekick is always good.

Richard Conte is Hayworth's brother-in-law and Cardinale's uncle. This fine actor is wasted here in a part that either was badly written or left on the cutting room floor.

John Smith was a Wayne protégé of sorts, Wayne gave him an early break in The High and the Mighty which he produced. Smith went on to star in the Laramie TV series and on completion of that he was cast opposite Cardinale, probably at Wayne's insistence. I remember always wondering what happened to him because he left show business shortly afterwards. Then back in the Nineties I read he had died of cirrhosis of the liver. I guess you can fill in the blanks.

At the time Circus World came out, there was on television a prime time series called International Showtime. It was on Fridays at 8 pm. and it was set in a different city in Europe every week. Hosted by Don Ameche it featured the very best circus acts in the world. So did Circus World, but it certainly was no incentive for people to come out to see this when they could see the same thing at home. Also Paramount re-released Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth to a brisk box office business at the same time Circus World came out.

So for all these reasons Circus World flopped and bankrupted producer Samuel Bronstein. Nevertheless if you're a circus fan you will enjoy seeing this. But it's not the Duke his fans have come to expect.

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10 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
We ain't talking "Citizen Kane" here., 8 mayo 2005

Author: callingbrian de United States

Some sources claim Samuel Bronston's "Circus World" was filmed in Cinerama. It wasn't. It was filmed in Ultra-Panavision 70 and released in some venues in the single lens "Ultra-Cinerama" format, which optically expanded the image to fill the huge Cinerama screen. Regardless, the cinematography is outstanding, which, along with a haunting Main Title theme by composer Dimitri Tiomkin, is perhaps the best thing that can be said about this unfortunate production. That is, unless you consider the fact it contributed to the collapse of producer Samuel Bronston's short-lived film empire to be a good thing.

It, along with its' sister 1964 Bronston mega-production, "The Fall of The Roman Empire", served to sink the producer's four year Spanish production company and end his fairly short career as a film mogul. In those four years he produced, besides the two films already mentioned, "King of Kings", "55 Days at Peking", and "El Cid". No independent producer had ever attempted so ambitious an undertaking, which made Bronston's failure perhaps even more spectacular than the films he attempted.

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Cinerama or not ?, 17 febrero 2008

Author: GJValent de Chicago, IL United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

One of the previous poster's referred to this NOT being a Cinerama film. He's right, it's not. However, he alludes to it having been advertised as such in some cities. Chicago was one of those. Circus World premiered in Chicago at the McVicker Theater on Madison just west of State. (That theater had previously screened How the West was Won, a TRUE Cinerama film. HTWWW ran there for what seemed to be a year before moving to the neighborhood theaters.) Like stated, they had three screens to fill. The newspaper ads even used the Cinerama trademark, (the accordion folded logo). A friend saw it there with his parents, and all he talked about was the ship capsizing sequence. I saw the flick on TV, and, that seemed very anti-climactic. All in all a pretty underwhelming film. One big fluke, near the beginning, John Wayne is being wheeled around the circus ring on top of a stagecoach at full speed. He then shoots burning lamps (or something) off the tops of poles held by assistants in front of the stands full of spectators. Um, wouldn't the bullets being fired hit at least some of those folks behind the targets ? Maybe my memory isn't so good.

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It's just a movie . . ., 24 junio 2006

Author: mrm14 de United States

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.

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7 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
Very, very bad movie!!, 26 febrero 2004
Author: stephangrunst de Münster, Germany

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.

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3 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
The Duke & Rita - That's All Folks, 16 febrero 2004
Author: Henry Erlenwein (herlenwein@msn.com) de USA

I can't understand how a producer like Samuel Bronston, who gave us the 70MM spectaculars "King of Kings" and "El Cid", could deliver something as poor as this. And with Henry Hathaway directing it's even more of a puzzle. Is it that bad? Well you see there's this circus ship docked in France performing on deck and when a crowd of people move to one side it falls over. Does not list. It just falls over. And then it won't sink. I think some of the sets were salvaged from "The Fall of the Roman Empire". There isn't even a clear timeframe i.e. year or decade. The editing along with terrible backdrops and processed shots are amateurish. Dimitri Tiomkin wrote some of the most beautiful scores for motion pictures but I think he was watching "The Nutcracker", by mistake, when he penned this one. It is kind of fun to watch a young Claudia Cardinale play a naive superstitious acrobat. But Lloyd Nolan and Richard Conte are never really given a chance to fulfill their parts. The basic storyline is not a bad one, it's just the execution of it. If you like John Wayne playing "The Duke" here he is. Watch it and file it for old times sake. If your a Rita Hayworth fan, here she is, lovely and charismatic as ever. These two stars carry the show . The rest is not much to talk about. And that's how I rate it. 2 Stars.

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2 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Slow moving and tired film upon circus world with the great John Wayne, 29 enero 2005

Author: ma-cortes

The movie talks about a circus employer(John Wayne)and his foster daughter(Claudia Cardinale),her lover(John Smith)and a trapeze artiste (Rita Hayworth) who bears a dark secret that originates the drama.

In the picture there are love story, circus show,melodrama but isn't fast movement and for that is bored and dreary. Runtime film is overlong : two hours and some and happen few events .

¨The greatest show of the earth¨ of Cecil B. Mille with Charlton Heston is better and obtained many Oscars while than ¨circus world¨ was a real flop and failed in the box office and didn't achieve success nowhere. In spite of the deal of famous screenwriters:Ben Hetch,James Edward Grant,Philip Jordan and Nicholas Ray, the argument is confused and embarrassed. The picture finished to sink at Samuel Bronston's empire jointed to ¨the fall of the Roman Empire¨ because both didn't make letterbox. However the circus spectacles are breathtaking : the racehorses, stagecoach pursuits with Indians riders, the clowns shows,the trapeze artistes are spellbound.

The motion picture will like to John Wayne and circus fans . Rating: Average. Score : 4,30/10

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6 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
pretty bad, 1 febrero 2004

Author: kyle_furr

I'm a big John Wayne fan and I had never heard of the film. Basically all it is is Wayne dealing with a lot of problems trying to put up a circus. John Wayne and Rita Hayworth are not very good in this movie. For die-hard John Wayne fans only.

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