Under the Big Top

A scene from Tod Browning's 1932 film classic Freaks.

Because it is in the imagination business, Hollywood has always been fascinated with the circus. What else is so often cited, even in the adult world, as the ultimate escape? I think I'll run away and join the circus. In the world of celluloid make-believe, circuses represent a carefree life of glamour, travel, excitement, and audience adoration. Of course, the less glamorous Big Top jobs, such as cage cleaners, rarely made good heroes but clowns and performers certainly got the, er, lion's share of screen attention.

On the silver screen, circus movies worked and when Technicolor became viable, the already larger-than-life spectacles almost jumped off the screen. Almost all the major studio stars put their time in one circus film or another; Charlie Chaplin was one of the first to tackle the subject exactly 70 years ago in The Circus (4/16, 5:30am; AMC). While it's not as well-known as The Kid or City Lights (7am), The Circus remains one of Chaplin's solid directorial efforts. It shows on AMC this week as part of a spotlight on Chaplin's films, and stars Merna Kennedy, Allen Garcia, Betty Morrissey, and Harry Crocker. Other Chaplin films highlighted that day on AMC include Limelight (8:30am),Modern Times (11am),The Great Dictator (12:30pm), and Monsieur Verdoux (2:45pm).

Bigger-than-life, however, is problematic when reduced in scope. Small wonder that when those big-screen spectaculars made the soon-inevitable transition to television, something was lost in the translation. While the circus made the perfect backdrop for musicals and dramas from the Twenties through the Fifties, by the Sixties it was as stale as afternoon matinee popcorn.

Turner Classic Movies is highlighting five circus-themed films on Saturday (4/18, TCM) that are about as varied in style, treatment, and result as the subject gets. 1952'sThe Greatest Show on Earth (7pm) takes centerstage first with its behind-the-scenes melodrama about an acrobat (Betty Hutton) whose attentions are sought by the star trapeze artist (Cornell Wilde) and the ringmaster (Charlton Heston). This Cecil B. DeMille-directed film won Best Picture, and brings a fairly impressive cast of stars and guests, including Dorothy Lamour, Gloria Grahame, Lawrence Tierney,and James Stewart as a fugitive clown hiding behind his makeup. TGSOE also made good use of the real Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus for many of its scenes. Lots of hokey, Fifties-style overacting here but the trainwreck scene is pretty memorable.

What is it with daring young men and flying trapezes? In 1956's Trapeze (9:45pm), the old trapeze star (Burt Lancaster) is being upstaged by his protégé (Tony Curtis) but things don't get really tense until the young female tumbler (Gina Lollabrigida) shows up. None of the three really have to do a whole lot except look good, and they do that well. They also left the stunts to the professionals, used to good effect by the film's CinemaScope quality. Brit Carol Reed directed; Katy Jurado and Thomas Gomez also star.

Three Ring Circus (11:45pm), a 1954 offering, is the weakest of these five, being largely an excuse to get Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis together in a circus context for laffs. Zsa Zsa Gabor and Sig Ruman costar as does, inexplicably, Joanne Dru and Elsa Lanchester. Entirely forgettable. Lavish Hollywood productions were falling out of favor whenBilly Rose's Jumbo (4/19, 1:30am) was released in 1962; with civil rights and the threat of Cuba concerning the country, the Rogers & Hart musical seemed out of step with the times and probably would have been more successful if made 10 years earlier. Still, the score, adapted from the original 1935 Broadway version of Jumbo, and the Busby Berkeley-choreographed sequencees are exuberant enough to balance the flimsy story of a daughter's (Doris Day) fight to save her father's (Jimmy Durante) circus from a rival (Dean Jagger), with the man she loves (Stephen Boyd) caught in the middle. Martha Raye also stars.

The circus movie that got the closest to getting it right must be TMC's final film in the lineup: Freaks (4/19, 3:45am). Director Tod Browning's 1932 film is a cult classic in every sense. It boasts a well-crafted love triangle between a greedy young trapeze (!) artist (Olga Baclanova) who is more interested in her midget husband's (Harry Earles) financial holdings than he is, and has her eye on the circus strongman (Harry Victor). You'll never see a supporting cast quite like this — it includes Daisy Earles, Johnny Eck, Schlitzie, Prince Randian, Zip and Pip, Texas' conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, and other sideshow faces of the Thirties. Clocking in at slightly over an hour, Freaks succeeds where none of the other circus films do in casting an unsettling shadow over an already surreal world. The last scenes featuring "The Feathered Hen" have not left my mind since I first saw this film in 1971.

It's not part of TCM's circus lineup on Saturday but if the notion of another circus movie is appealing, try 1941's The Wagons Roll at Night (4/22, noon). Humphrey Bogart plays a ruthless carnival manager in this not-awful film that also stars Sylvia Sidney, Eddie Albert, and — again — Sig Ruman.