A stranger came to my door one night to give me mail that had been misdelivered. He was wearing a jacket with a circus logo and when I asked what he did he said he'd been part of a trapeze act. "Catcher or flier?" A flier, he replied, and left without further comment. That isn't what I expected at all. I wanted him to ask how the hell I knew the difference. If he HAD asked I would have said I learned it from this movie.
Had he pursued the matter I would have asked him questions like which was more difficult, the "bird's nest" or the simple "pirouette". I was dying to show off but never got the chance. Well, we probably wouldn't have become friends anyway. I hate self-contained people. Most are snooty.
I wish some night a geometrician would bring me some misdelivered mail, though, since I can't understand how the word "trapeze" comes from the Latin "trapezium" and "trapezoid" because I learned in high school that a trapezoid was a two dimensional figure with no parallel sides, like a befouled rectangle, whereas a "trapeze", well, it cuts an ordinary rectangle and -- Where was I? Yes, this movie. Thank you.
Tony Curtis is an outstanding flier (he's the guy that does all the spinning) who comes to a Paris circus to look up the famous ex-catcher, Burt Lancaster. Curtis wants to learn how to do a triple somersault. Lancaster is a bitter gimp who advises Curtis to go back to Brooklyn, but is finally, reluctantly, won over by Curtis's enthusiasm and youthful talent.
The two of them begin working on a circus act at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. Then -- cherchez la femme. Gina Lollobrigida dressed in brief spangles and a dazzling smile worms her way into the act. First she seduces Curtis. Then she seduces Lancaster. Conflict ensues. Lancaster winds up with Lollobrigida, Curtis with the triple somersault he craves.
I'm not sure who got the better deal. Gina Lollobrigida is stunning in her 1950s way. Her features are so even, so conventionally organized, and so thoroughly covered with make up that her head would look completely comfortable atop a mannequin's body in some high-end boutique. (That doesn't make her ugly.) And the triple somersault is supposed to be so difficult that Lancaster is only one of some three or four people to have ever mastered it. Actually I read somewhere that it's not that tough.
This is a better movie than Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth." DeMille seemed to assume that no one in his audience had ever seen a circus and everyone longed to see one, so the screen time is filled with parades of Disney characters and other extraneous bombast. "Trapeze" avoids most of that or brushes it off as inconsequential except as it directly affects the plot. In other words the director, Carol Reed ("The Third Man," et al) feels that the audience is more interested in the characters than in seeing half a dozen Indian elephants trundle past us wearing clown hats. Reed gives us credit for having seen a circus and for having the intelligence to buy tickets if we want to see Mickey Mouse strut his stuff on the sawdust. DeMille's movie is full of reaction shots, the audience of nuclear families cheering and clapping orgasmically at the ongoing nonsense. Reed shows us virtually nothing of the audience during the trapeze act except during crises, when we see only the circus cadre staring tensely upwards.
In 1956, when this was released, Tony Curtis was still in the heart throb phase of his career, but Reed has subdued him and he turns in a believable and thoughtful performance, the kind he later showed he was capable of in movies like "The Outsider" and "The Boston Strangler." He did some splendid comedies too, and that's nothing to be sneezed at. Lancaster is his reliable self in this serious role. What a physical specimen he was. Lollobrigida is beautiful but, for whatever reason, perhaps the script, she's only bland and beautiful.
I'm giving this movie a bonus point for demonstrating what a real circus is like, without the flamboyance and the condescension. For instance, Lancaster begins the film as a rigger. He checks knots and so forth upstairs. Now, is that a glamor occupation or what?
Had he pursued the matter I would have asked him questions like which was more difficult, the "bird's nest" or the simple "pirouette". I was dying to show off but never got the chance. Well, we probably wouldn't have become friends anyway. I hate self-contained people. Most are snooty.
I wish some night a geometrician would bring me some misdelivered mail, though, since I can't understand how the word "trapeze" comes from the Latin "trapezium" and "trapezoid" because I learned in high school that a trapezoid was a two dimensional figure with no parallel sides, like a befouled rectangle, whereas a "trapeze", well, it cuts an ordinary rectangle and -- Where was I? Yes, this movie. Thank you.
Tony Curtis is an outstanding flier (he's the guy that does all the spinning) who comes to a Paris circus to look up the famous ex-catcher, Burt Lancaster. Curtis wants to learn how to do a triple somersault. Lancaster is a bitter gimp who advises Curtis to go back to Brooklyn, but is finally, reluctantly, won over by Curtis's enthusiasm and youthful talent.
The two of them begin working on a circus act at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. Then -- cherchez la femme. Gina Lollobrigida dressed in brief spangles and a dazzling smile worms her way into the act. First she seduces Curtis. Then she seduces Lancaster. Conflict ensues. Lancaster winds up with Lollobrigida, Curtis with the triple somersault he craves.
I'm not sure who got the better deal. Gina Lollobrigida is stunning in her 1950s way. Her features are so even, so conventionally organized, and so thoroughly covered with make up that her head would look completely comfortable atop a mannequin's body in some high-end boutique. (That doesn't make her ugly.) And the triple somersault is supposed to be so difficult that Lancaster is only one of some three or four people to have ever mastered it. Actually I read somewhere that it's not that tough.
This is a better movie than Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth." DeMille seemed to assume that no one in his audience had ever seen a circus and everyone longed to see one, so the screen time is filled with parades of Disney characters and other extraneous bombast. "Trapeze" avoids most of that or brushes it off as inconsequential except as it directly affects the plot. In other words the director, Carol Reed ("The Third Man," et al) feels that the audience is more interested in the characters than in seeing half a dozen Indian elephants trundle past us wearing clown hats. Reed gives us credit for having seen a circus and for having the intelligence to buy tickets if we want to see Mickey Mouse strut his stuff on the sawdust. DeMille's movie is full of reaction shots, the audience of nuclear families cheering and clapping orgasmically at the ongoing nonsense. Reed shows us virtually nothing of the audience during the trapeze act except during crises, when we see only the circus cadre staring tensely upwards.
In 1956, when this was released, Tony Curtis was still in the heart throb phase of his career, but Reed has subdued him and he turns in a believable and thoughtful performance, the kind he later showed he was capable of in movies like "The Outsider" and "The Boston Strangler." He did some splendid comedies too, and that's nothing to be sneezed at. Lancaster is his reliable self in this serious role. What a physical specimen he was. Lollobrigida is beautiful but, for whatever reason, perhaps the script, she's only bland and beautiful.
I'm giving this movie a bonus point for demonstrating what a real circus is like, without the flamboyance and the condescension. For instance, Lancaster begins the film as a rigger. He checks knots and so forth upstairs. Now, is that a glamor occupation or what?