The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille, 1952)

I was on Faceplace discussing how deathly boring I found The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) and mourning the dearth of camp in it, despite the infamous "Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool" line. A friend replied that it has nothing to do with camp and is instead of work of deep moral seriousness or something to that effect. That was enough to remind me to watch it again in the distant future. For now, I got plenty of moral seriousness from The Greatest Show on Earth.

To be clear, this is a repulsive right-wing tract extolling the virtues of Christianity and the white nuclear family against the threats of unions, Communism, and moral unseriousness. I was therefore expecting a slog of the most dreadful proportions until the early scene in which a priest arrives to bless the circus train. And from that point on, I was hypnotized by DeMille's loony commitment to his conserative project. In this, it reminded me of another right-wing 1952 film, Leo McCarey's anti-Communist My Son John. DeMille cannot match McCarey's depth of feeling. But I was fascinated by how DeMille took the time to include close-ups of anonymous families watching the circus. They were his constituency and the film amounts to his direct sermon to them which juices the endless footage of circus acts with an ideological charge that would have been lacking in a straighter film. Is this right-wing camp? Or is that just another way of saying it's kitsch in that camp is what I like and kitsch is what you like? In any case, I was unpleasantly surprised.

Grade: a B+ that makes me itch

Other Hollywood films which deserved the Best Picture Oscar much more than The Greatest Show on Earth: Strange Fascination, Clash by Night, Sudden Fear, Way of a Gaucho, Bend of the River, Son of Paleface, Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, Paula, The Marrying Kind, Limelight, The Narrow Margin, The Lusty Men, Rancho Notorious, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Big Sky, Monkey Business, Park Row, Ruby Gentry, No Room for the Groom, This Woman is Dangerous, Actors and Sin, The Star, etc.