Singin' in the Rain (1952)

 

Singing in the Rain features so many joyous moments. Everyone, of course, remembers Gene Kelly’s dazzling rendition of the title song, but there are lots of great performances throughout the film. It’s very easy to see why it’s considered one of the greatest of movie musicals. It also depicts a significant historical period in film, the transition from silents to talkies, and it manages to have lots of fun along the way. I’ll admit that the main plot itself isn’t particularly complex, but what Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor manage to do to “fill” the time is what makes it work so spectacularly. The film begins with the arrival of Kelly’s Don Lockwood and Jean Hagen’s Lina Lamont at the premiere of their new film, The Royal Rascal. Prompted by an interviewer who bears a striking resemblance to Louella Parsons, Don starts recounting their (well, mostly his) history. Interestingly, the verbal and the visual of his life story don’t quite match. Don claims his motto is “dignity, always dignity,” but the song “Fit as a Fiddle” with O’Connor’s Cosmo show that they certainly haven’t always lived up to that motto. We get to see a bit of behind-the-scenes filmmaking as Don and Lina prepare for their next film, The Dueling Cavalier, but everything gets interrupted by the arrival of talking pictures. The exaggerated style of silent film acting has to be replaced by the more subtle performances that would come to be associated with the sound era. And poor Lina, with her high-pitched, grating, low-rent voice, struggles the most with trying to fit in with the new expectations of stardom. After the film is completed – despite numerous ridiculous and hilarious problems with sound recording – preview audiences can only laugh at how awful it is and how badly Lina sounds and how silly Don’s overacting is. To “save” the film, Don and Cosmo and studio head R.F. Simpson (a deadpan Millard Mitchell) decide to reshoot it as a musical without letting Lina know that her voice will be replaced by Reynolds’ Kathy Selden, an aspiring actress Don met through one of the funniest “meet-cutes” in film history. It’s the musical numbers that stand out in your memory after watching this film. The performance of the title song is justifiably famous, but the film features a lot of great moments of singing and dancing. For example, “Make ‘Em Laugh” had to be painful for O’Connor, but what a feat of physical comedy he demonstrates. “Moses Supposes” takes the diction training to a new level of hilarity. Kelly’s Don creates a magical atmosphere on a soundstage to tell Kathy that he loves her through the song “You Were Meant for Me.” The biggest number in the film is probably the “Broadway Rhythm” sequence, which doesn’t really fit within what we know of as the plot to The Dueling Cavalier. But it features Cyd Charisse, a particular favorite of mine, in a showcase of her dancing ability. A journey through burlesque, vaudeville, and contemporary theater, the number dissolves at one point into a pure fantasy sequence on a soundstage, featuring the longest white veil in movie history. Again, what this has to do with a movie starring Lockwood and Lamont or, frankly, Singin’ in the Rain’s plot is a mystery, but it’s certainly a beautiful mystery. What strikes me when I watch a classic musical like Singin’ in the Rain is how long the takes last. They had to make movies the hard way in those days: you did all or almost all of the number, and if it took many retakes, you did it over and over again. These performances were not created in the editing room. It took real talent at singing and dancing. All of the stars are great here, and even Rita Moreno in an early and small part makes quite an impression. It’s interesting to watch the film and see Kathy Seldon and Debbie Reynolds become stars simultaneously. Reynolds certainly manages to hold her own in her scenes with Kelly and O’Connor, two of the Hollywood’s most famed dancers. Much has been made of the fact that only Jean Hagen was nominated for an Oscar for her performance, but it’s not as if she were going to compete with the three top-billed performers in the same category. Sometimes, the Academy overlooks people, frequently for decades, but that doesn’t diminish Hagen’s accomplishments here. She takes her few moments on screen and gives them a jolt of excitement and humor that serves the overall plot well. You try delivering the line “I make more money than Calvin Coolidge put together” and see if you can make it as funny as Hagen does.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jean Hagen) and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture

Rashomon (1951; 1952)

Rashomon is a film that features black-and-white cinematography, just eight actors, and only three settings for the entire narrative, yet it still manages to captivate viewers and make then reconsider their notions of what a film can achieve with such simple materials. At the film’s start, a woodcutter and a priest are sitting out a rainstorm in the crumbling ruins of the Rashomon Gate when a commoner seeks shelter with them. The woodcutter and priest are still puzzling over the conflicting testimony that they’ve just seen involving the death of a samurai and the rape of his wife. The commoner, sensing that the rain might last a while, is intrigued enough to ask what happened. What follows is a bewildering, entrancing series of four different versions of the same event told from multiple perspectives: the woodcutter’s version, that of a bandit who captures the couple and rapes the wife, the wife herself, and, most astonishing, the dead samurai, who testifies through a medium. We see just how altered the same story can be through different sets of eyes, and we are left at the end of the film with no clear sense of what “really” happened. I don’t think we’re meant to know anyway. Instead, we’re supposed to start questioning the integrity of any story that we hear or see, even this film itself. When the woodcutter has to admit later that he has lied in his testimony, we are dumbfounded to discover that even the person telling us the story of what he has seen and said might be lying. The optimistic ending perhaps is necessary for us to retain some faith in our fellow human beings, but it doesn’t automatically satisfy a viewer who has begun questioning the very role of narrative itself. The breakout star of Rashomon was Toshiro Mifune as the bandit Tajormaru; he’s wild, almost deranged, in his behavior, and you sometimes wonder if he thinks he’s in a different movie from the rest of the cast. The real star for me, though, is Machiko Kyo, the actress who plays the woman who is raped by the bandit. She gets the most wide-ranging series of characterizations because each witness tailors the story to suit their individual needs, and she is depicted in wildly different ways by the men who tell her story. Her own version of events is quite the tour-de-force performance itself. Rashomon was the first major Japanese film to garner international attention, and even though more than seven decades have passed since its initial release, it still has the power to startle us and make us wonder how people can have “seen” such wildly different events. That’s what a true cinematic masterpiece can do – even after all these years. The woodcutter’s refrain of “I just don’t understand” lingers with us long after the film itself has ended. A note about foreign films and their years of eligibility: Rashomon was first released in Japan in 1950, but it didn’t make it to the United States until December 1951. That, however, didn’t mean it was eligible for anything other than a special honor, which it won, for foreign language film. It was still in release in 1952 and received Oscar attention the next year for its set decoration. You’ll see throughout Academy Award history this particular oddity. A film will be nominated for or even win the Foreign Language Film Oscar and then be nominated for other awards the following year. Such are the vagaries of the Academy Awards.

Oscar Win (1951): Honorary Award for being the “most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.”

Other Oscar Nomination (1952): Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration

Moulin Rouge (1952)

Moulin Rouge, a nominee for Best Picture of 1952, is as vibrant and colorful as the art done by the man who is the film's primary subject, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Perhaps best known for the lithographs advertising such nightclubs as the Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec was an artist of the underclass, people whose lives revolve around the world of darkness. Director John Huston uses a couple of montages to introduce the work of Toulouse-Lautrec to the movie-going audience, but the focus is primarily upon the rather sad life of the man himself. What a significant contrast there is between his personal life and the bright images captured in his artwork.

Jose Ferrer, who had won Best Actor two years earlier for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac, has the difficult task of inhabiting the body of a man whose legs were damaged in a fall and stopped growing. Ferrer had to walk on his knees at times with his legs strapped behind him; this was before the advent of computer-generated imagery, after all. At times, we see Toulouse-Lautrec in long shots, no doubt making it easier to fool the eye, but it must have been murder on Ferrar's knees when he had to be shown in a medium shot. I admire his dedication to the role, but I have to admit that I find him just as stagey and overly dramatic here as in his Oscar-winning role.

The film begins with a performance by two pairs of dancers at the Moulin Rouge nightclub. The women in the pairs are particularly vigorous in their dancing and are obviously rivals for attention. While they are dancing the can-can and pushing and kicking each other, Toulouse-Lautrec sits at his usual table sketching away on paper covering the table. Most of these sketches are rough, certainly, but they show the talent he has for capturing movement. The owner of the Moulin Rouge even offers to give him free drinks for a month if Toulouse-Lautrec will turn one of his drawings into a poster. Given that he is a somewhat insatiable alcoholic, Toulouse-Lautrec accepts the challenge.

On his way home from the nightclub, Toulouse-Lautrec starts to reminisce. We get a series of flashbacks of his childhood as the son of the Comte and Countess of Toulouse-Lautrec, first cousins who married each other. We are witness to the horrible fall down a staircase that led to his short stature. Despite attempts by several doctors, his legs just stop growing, leaving the rest of his body disproportionate to them. We, sadly, also have to witness the rejection he faces from women who consider him to be freakish. They make some of the cruelest remarks to him, such as claiming that he will never find anyone to love him. It's a lot of information for a flashback sequence to carry, but I suppose it's quicker than depicting all of these events from his first 26 years in greater detail and in a more chronological order. It does make for a very long walk.

Before he reaches his apartment that night, he meets Marie Charlet (played by newcomer Colette Marchand), a prostitute on the run from the police. He takes her back to his place after lying to an officer about her whereabouts for the evening. She likes the place because it has a tub and because he gives her money for a new dress, so she stays, at least for a while. It's quite apparent that Toulouse-Lautrec is trying to rescue Marie from her life on the streets and that he has fallen in love with her. However, she often disappears for the night, leaving him jealous and distraught. When he tries to paint her portrait, she demands money from him because he pays models to pose for him. It's a rather dysfunctional relationship, to be honest. She seems to be in love with another man, Babare (Walter Cross), and can't really give up being a prostitute for Toulouse-Lautrec's benefit. When he confronts her in a bar that she frequents, she calls him "a runt and a cripple," shocking even the other bar patrons.

Distraught over Marie's behavior, Toulouse-Lautrec goes home and turns on the gas with the intention of committing suicide. Instead, he starts to finish a painting of the dancers at the Moulin Rouge and decides to turn the gas back off. We are meant to understand that at this moment he has decided to devote his life to his art rather than to love. What follows is a sequence where he seemingly invents the process for reproducing bright colors in a lithograph, and his first masterpiece, called "La Goulue" after the dancer who inspired it, becomes a controversial hit on the streets of Paris. Even though opinion is divided, everyone is talking about his work, including his father (also played by Ferrer), who is appalled at the subject matter.

Ten years pass and Toulouse-Lautrec is on his way home when he sees a woman on a bridge. He thinks she is contemplating suicide, but instead she is merely throwing away a key that was given to her by a lover who wants to keep her but not marry her. After another chance encounter with this woman, they begin attending the theater and going to dinner together and taking in other social events. Myriamme (played by Suzanne Flon) begins to fall in love with him, but he does not return her affections. In fact, he seems completely oblivious to her attentions, perhaps as a consequence of his earlier mistreatment by Marie. He has become very bitter about love and romance as the years have passed. After they meet her old flame Marcel at the race track--he's played by a young Peter Cushing--she confronts Toulouse-Lautrec about her feelings and then decides to go back to her former lover. Toulouse-Lautrec starts drinking heavily, well, heavier than he was already drinking, which was pretty heavy anyway. He falls down another staircase and winds up dying in a bed at his family's estate.

By focusing on these two periods in Toulouse-Lautrec's life, the time of his first success and his later period of fame, Moulin Rouge does miss an opportunity to provide a full portrait of the artist. For the sake of brevity, we are given only highlights of his brief life, the flashback sequence to his childhood being a prime example. The rest of the movie is primarily about his relationships with Marie and with Myriamme. I know we shouldn't expect a biographical film to be completely accurate, but quite a few of the details are significantly wrong here. For example, Toulouse-Lautrec didn't break both of his legs at the same time; the accidents were a year apart. He also didn't die as a result of another fall; his death is usually attributed to the consequences of alcoholism and syphilis. I suppose those are small matters to dispute, and admittedly, you couldn't have talked about syphilis in a mainstream Hollywood film in 1952, but the emphasis on Toulouse-Lautrec's relationships with a prostitute and with a woman whose love he doesn't return gives an inordinate sense of importance to those relationships.

The description above perhaps makes the film sound pretty mundane, and in many ways, it is. Making the artist's life your focus, in this particular case, means an unhappy plot overall. However, there are several aspects of the film that make it interesting to watch. The performances at the nightclub are spectacular, especially the athletic can-can dancing. There's such a flurry of petticoats during those dance numbers, it's tough to keep track of how many people are actually on the dance floor. Even though she has a small part, it's also a delight to see Zsa Zsa Gabor as an egocentric singer. Her singing was dubbed, of course, and you can easily tell she's not proficient at lip syncing, but when she goes on about her latest conquest, you can't help but smile. And, of course, there are the paintings themselves. Toulouse-Lautrec called himself a "painter of the streets and of the gutter," yet he found such beauty in the places he drew that it's enjoyable just to watch the montages of his work flash across the screen.

The Quiet Man (1952)

You might expect that a film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne would be a Western. However, The Quiet Man, nominated for Best Picture of 1952, is a gentle film that evokes the simple pleasures of life in the Irish countryside. You might think that such a film, given the pedigree of its cast (more on them later), would attempt, in some way, to depict the Irish people in non-stereotypical ways. However, The Quiet Man is one of the drinking-est movies ever. Hardly a moment goes by, it seems, without someone hoisting a pint. You might even think that the film's gorgeous co-star, Maureen O'Hara, would be able to transcend the long-standing images of redheads as being fiery and temperamental. Yet you'd be wrong there too, as the actress plays--or is forced to play?--to type most of the time.

Despite all of this, I still found The Quiet Man to be a charming, beautiful film. The color cinematography is so luscious that it will make you yearn for a vacation to the Emerald Isle. I don't know that the Irish landscape has ever been more lovingly depicted on film. Ford's cinematographers, Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout, deservedly won Oscars for their work here. Ford also won the award that year for Best Director, but this film is very different from the films he made in genres that were more familiar territory: westerns and war movies. This movie is a character study, really a study of several characters.

Wayne plays Sean Thornton, a boxer who has accidentally killed a man in the ring. He has retired to Ireland, the place of his mother's birth and where he himself was raised as a young boy, with plans to purchase her family's home and begin a new life. Having lived in Innisfree until his family moved to America, Sean knows several of the people in town. One of the first of his old friends he meets is Barry Fitzgerald's Michaeleen Flynn, who never refuses a drink regardless of the occasion. Flynn becomes Sean's unofficial envoy into the village life of Innisfree, trying to help him achieve his goal of purchasing his mother's house and winning the hand of O'Hara's Mary Kate Danaher.

Naturally, there are complications. The ancestral land is now owned by the Widow Tillane (played with a fun sense of archness by Mildred Natwick), and another landowner, Squire "Red" Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), thinks he has a right to purchase the land before Sean gets it. The widow, however, has her heart set on courting Squire Danaher and gives the property to Sean in hopes that Red will forget about the land and focus on her instead. You know, of course, that doesn't happen, and when Wayne's Sean and O'Hara's Mary Kate meet and the romantic sparks fly, you shouldn't be surprised to learn that Red is the biggest obstacle they will face in their courtship.

You'd fall in love with O'Hara too if your first sight of her was as vivid as Sean's. Ford has O'Hara herding sheep the first time Wayne's character sees her. She's in vibrant blue and red, and her red hair glistens brightly in the sun. She's quite a vision. Throughout the movie, in fact, it's tough to take your eyes off O'Hara. She is almost always clad in bright colors which showcase her beauty. My personal favorite is when she wears green. If you'd forgotten just how stunning she was, watch this movie and all will be revealed.

The romance between Sean and Mary Kate has its comedic elements. The first time he kisses her, for example, she slaps him. When he refuses to take her bonnet in a town race--choosing the widow's bonnet instead--Mary Kate fumes. When their matchmaker, Michaeleen, takes them for their first carriage ride after they are allowed, finally, by her brother to court, he gives them the rules for appropriate behavior, including "no patty-fingers." No, I don't know what that is, either, but doesn't it sound funny? My favorite line about their relationship, though, also comes from Flynn. He tells Mary Kate: "Have the good manners not to hit the man until he's your husband and is entitled to hit you back." She refuses Sean after they married until her dowry can be provided; she's a very traditional bride in many ways. She even tries to leave town on the train at one point, only to have him drag her--literally at times, by the hair--back to town. I'm certainly not condoning violence against women, but the scene is played for laughs, and Sean gets what's coming to him soon afterward anyway.

One of the centerpieces of the film is the fight between Wayne and McLaglen, a character actor who appeared in many Ford films. The two men, ostensibly using so-called Marquis of Queensbury rules at all times, punch each other through the Irish countryside and into town. They even take a short beer break before continuing the slugfest. The entire town shows up for the match, and Michaeleen starts taking bets on which man will win. I won't ruin it for you, but I think it wouldn't take much to guess how a somewhat traditional Hollywood picture of the 1950s might end.

The supporting cast is first-rate, particularly McLaglen, Natwick, and Fitzgerald. I'd also like to point out how good Ward Bond is in the role of Father Lonergan. Given his usual tough guy roles, it's refreshing to see Bond here as the fishing-loving parish priest who doesn't mind taking a drink now and then. He and Natwick and Fitzgerald have a great time plotting a way to get Mary Kate and Sean married so that the widow and Red can finally be together.

It's the stars, though, who stand out here. Wayne is charming and witty, still masculine but not a man who resorts to violence (at least, at first) to deal with his problems or issues. I liked this performance. He was often an underrated actor, and The Quiet Man shows that he didn't need all of the macho posturing in order to be intriguing on film. In fact, despite a few on-screen implications by some of the townspeople, Wayne's Sean manages to convey a consistent sense of strength and security.

O'Hara is the real find there. She's as fiery as you'd expect a redhead to be, I suppose, but you have to admire the ferocity with which she tackles some of her scenes. When she "returns" Wayne's kiss, she's more aggressive with him than he has been with her. And there's a fire in her eyes whenever she has to confront her brother over the promised dowry of furniture and money. You won't be able to take your eyes off her when she's on screen. It makes perfect sense that Wayne's Sean would be immediately drawn to her. So are we.

I also want to mention briefly that this is one of the few films I've seen that has characters speaking in Gaelic, the native language of Ireland. O'Hara speaks a few words to the priest, apparently about the wedding night, and those lines are not translated into English. We are allowed to be as "shut out" of information as someone like Sean would be at that moment. I was happy to see that the original language of this beautiful country was allowed into the script and even happier that there were no subtitles to ruin the impact those words have on a viewer.

Ivanhoe (1952)

Ivanhoe, nominated for Best Picture of 1952, is the kind of old-fashioned entertainment that the studio system turned out with regularity. This film adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's novel is very handsomely produced, with all kinds of lavish costumes and sets; it's from MGM, after all, and they certainly knew how to spend money at that studio. It has a pretty sold cast , with such stars as Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor (obviously, no relation), Joan Fontaine, and George Sanders. Unfortunately, it all adds up to pretty mediocre work. Aside from the obvious attention to detail in the production and some energetic battle sequences, there's little to recommend this film as one of the best of the era.

Robert Taylor plays Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, returning from the Crusades where he fought with King Richard the Lionhearted. He finds England under the control of the evil Prince John, who refuses to help raise the ransom needed to free his brother from prison in Austria. Ivanhoe joins up with Robin Hood and his men, and they attempt to collect enough money to get the rightful ruler of England returned to his throne. While this is all going on, there are subplots involving Ivanhoe's emotional tug-of-war between the Lady Rowena (Fontaine, who was apparently trying to capture some of her sister Olivia de Havilland's glory from the days of The Adventures of Robin Hood) and the beautiful Rebecca (Elizabeth Taylor, in one of her early starring roles as an adult), a Jewish woman who is forbidden by her father from falling in love with a non-Jew.

I enjoyed the scenes at the tournaments, where the knights jousted. Those are pretty thrilling to watch, and there's a true sense of excitement at watching Ivanhoe take on all of Prince John's knights in the tournament. There's also an extended siege at a castle where the Lady Rowena and Rebecca and her father and Ivanhoe and assorted other people are held hostage by Sanders' emotionally complex Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert. Robin's men arrive to help rescue everyone, so there are many arrows flying and lots of armor clanging and drawbridges and a fire and, well, a lot of fun for the viewers.

I was never that much of a fan of Scott's novel, and this movie does suffer a bit from having that melodramatic book as its source material. I can certainly understand how this film would have been successful during its time period. A lavish costume drama with state of the art battle sequences would be tough to resist. It just doesn't seem to rise to the level of one of Best Picture. Good fun, certainly, but not great.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

The Greatest Show on Earth won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1952, and it's widely regarded as one of the worst films ever to capture the top prize. You'll often see it cited as one of the examples of how often the Academy "gets it wrong." I don't fully agree that this is a bad movie even though I don't think it deserved to win Best Picture. It certainly isn't better than High Noon, which was also nominated that year and is one of the greatest films ever made. One of the other classic films of that year, Singin' in the Rain, wasn't even nominated for Best Picture, yet we all know what a reputation it has earned over time. No, what you get with The Greatest Show on Earth is simply an entertaining look at life behind the scenes of the Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus. Movies like this are popular for a reason. Cecil B. DeMille's circus movie manages to include romance, intrigue, organized crime, and elephants. It also has a pretty spectacular train wreck sequence that seems childish or amateurish by today's special effects standards but was pretty remarkable for its time.

Here are the basic elements of the plot. Charlton Heston plays Brad, the manager of the circus who wants a full season of money-making shows, so he hires a famous trapeze artist, a risk-taker named the Great Sebastian (played by Cornel Wilde). However, in doing so, he has to displace from the center ring the circus's own Holly (played by Betty Hutton). Further complicating matters is Holly's affection for Brad. He, of course, is far too consumed with making the show successful to realize that he also loves her. Holly manages to find a half-hearted romance with Sebastian, leaving Brad to respond to a silly flirtation from Angel, one of the elephant tamers (played by Gloria Grahame). Dorothy Lamour manages to make an appearance now and then too, apparently so she can crack jokes at the right time and sing a number or two. (Her co-stars in the Road movies, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, make cameos not to be missed.)

If you think this sounds a bit like a soap opera, you'd be right. What distinguishes this from other soap operas then and now is the backdrop of the circus. The film uses actual performers from Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey throughout the movie, and the scenes where they put up the tent or get ready for their performances are a fascinating look at the ways those mid-century spectacles were put together. In its documentary-like approach to those scenes and the ones of the actual circus productions themselves, you can get a glimpse of what made those shows so enticing to the ladies, gentlemen, and "children of all ages."

Hardly anyone in the cast delivers an award-worthy performance here. Heston, who would win Best Actor a few years later for Ben-Hur, is often painfully wooden, a trait he never quite lost throughout his long career, in my opinion. Wilde is shirtless as often as possible in the movie for a reason; he's also clad in tights a lot, and there's a reason for that as well. He certainly didn't seem to be hired for his acting ability. Hutton could be a talented singer and dancer--she has a couple of good numbers here--but as an actress, she wasn't particularly strong. Grahame delivers her lines with some zing, but even she seems to know the hokiness of what she's saying. Of course, she and Sebastian have a past; of course, she still loves him; and of course, she's going to pretend like she hates him now. Much of the story never rises above that level of cliche (and, yes, it was already a cliche in 1952).

I have to mention Jimmy Stewart as Buttons, one of the clowns. (The great Emmett Kelly is one of his colleagues.) He's a doctor who killed his wife and is now wanted by the police, who (naturally) can't find him because he looks like a clown rather than an accused murderer. Buttons has to stay in clown make-up throughout the movie, just one of the little conceits that make you pause and wonder why the script doesn't do a better job of addressing this oddity. Wouldn't the other performers wonder why he walks around made up like a clown all the time? The rest of the clowns don't do that. Wouldn't they wonder why he even seems to sleep in his clown make-up? It must have seemed unhealthy to some of them that he stays "in character" all the time, night and day. How odd that you'd hire Jimmy Stewart, one of the most famous actors of his generation, and hide his recognizable face for the entire movie. Thankfully, his voice is also so distinctive that you don't need to see Stewart's face to know that it's him.

I think what I like best about this movie is the sense of urgency and intensity that all of the circus performers seem to feel. They love the attention they get from the circus-goers. You understand why both Holly and Sebastian want the center ring. In a case like this, who wouldn't want to be the center of attention, both literally and metaphorically? Even when Brad is injured during the train wreck, the rest of the performers (especially Holly) are so desperate to put on a show that they come up with a way to have a circus in the middle of nowhere. To a degree, this film is really about show business in general, the desire that all performers have to connect with an audience, to receive that love and affection from the people who buy tickets. It's as if that's all they need to make them live. Perhaps it's that understanding of show business, that insight into the need to be in the spotlight, that made The Greatest Show on Earth the winner in 1952.