Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Cody
One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Adam Peters
(75%) The second movie (The magic box being the first) of a double feature presentation at the great Woolton cinema in Liverpool is weirdly a forgotten 1950's gem of a movie that anyone with at least some affection of old and increasingly scarce independent cinemas will absolutely love. Peter Sellers isn't the main focus of the movie, he's rather more a supporting role, but he's utterly fantastic as an old projectionist with a drink problem and he provides the best laughs. The plot is simple yet effective stuff, it's very well told as you really do want to know what's going to happen next; while the pacing never bogs down, and the comedy keeps on coming until the final reel. This really is a film I'd happily recommend to anyone and everyone, and is perfect for a wet Sunday afternoon.
wes-connors
Attractive "Born Free" couple Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers (as Jean and Matt Spenser) inherit a creaky, but functional old movie theater. Since they are having financial problems, they decide to manage the cinema. Crowds appear, despite broken reels and other mishaps. The most obvious joke is watching Peter Sellers, made-up as an old projectionist, work while a train makes the theater shake. Luckily, the train only runs once. The audiences in the "Bijou" had more fun than you will.**** The Smallest Show on Earth (4/9/57) Basil Dearden ~ Virginia McKenna, Bill Travers, Margaret Rutherford, Peter Sellers
Bill Slocum
"The Smallest Show On Earth" is the kind of comedy they used to churn out in England with ferocious consistency; despite its charms not one to remember except for the presence of the greatest film comedian of the sound era just coming into his own.That comedian is Peter Sellers, and "Smallest Show" gives him fourth billing as alcoholic projectionist Mr. Quill, one of three employees at a broken-down cinema in the dregs of England who faces unemployment when a young couple inherits the place with plans to sell out.It's a small role, in a small film, but Sellers as Quill is very good, better in fact than he was earlier fare like "The Ladykillers" (great film, small part) and "The Naked Truth" (big part, lousy film). Here we see Sellers for the first time as the funnyman who can tug on your heartstrings, working your sympathies with just a furrowed eyebrow or shuffling of feet. From 1959 to 1965 he had as good a run in movies as any star ever did, and this 1957 effort served as springboard.That's not so much of a reason to see "Smallest Show" for non-Sellers fans, so here's another: Sellers doesn't even deliver the best performance. The other two staffers, Bernard Miles as Old Tom the doorman and Margaret Rutherford (an Oscar winner a few years later) as Mrs. Fazackalee the ticket woman are every bit as good, while Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna as the young couple make for pleasant company. If not for the fact the jokes are weak, and the storyline thin, this would be a true winner, rather than just a mildly worthwhile Ealing Studios-wannabe relic.The main joke in "Smallest Show" centers around the dilapidated state of the old theater, or "kinema", that the couple inherits. The projector threatens to fall apart whenever a train passes. The ceiling is festooned with cobwebs. Portraits of Theda Bara and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. line the walls, and the features on offer are ancient cowboy films starring "Drifting Slim Stanley, Deputy U.S. Marshall". It's at times a stirring tribute to the movie business in its infancy, especially one scene where Mrs. Fazackalee plays her house organ to the flickering light of an old silent. But it never gels as a story."I'm sure there's a business like show business, but somehow I don't think this is it," McKenna's Jean jokes when the couple first get an eyeful of the place. That's about as good a one-liner as this film manages, despite the presence of "Ladykillers" writer William Rose as a scripter here.Director Basil Dearden makes sure we get plenty of cute scenes featuring Travers and McKenna struggling with the way things operate in their new place. The plot, what there is of it, centers around the couple's attempt to make a go at running the movie house, or at least making it look like they are, in order to persuade the owner of a rival theater to buy them out. The rival owner resorts to some shady tricks, but one never really has to worry overmuch how things turn out, as it falls together rather conveniently.The charm's the thing, the only thing, in watching Travers' reaction when accepting a chicken for admission, or Quill and Fazackalee at each other's throats regarding their new bosses' spending priorities: "My equipment is more important than your rats," Quill shouts, showing off Sellers' ability to melt into a thick northern English old-man accent with the help of some clever makeup.Unlike his earlier films, he really gives you a lump in the throat in this one, struggling with the bottle or skipping along a sidewalk after a good day at the box office, making you understand that the secret to Sellers was never just clever accents or physical pantomime but the preternatural empathy he brought to every part, beginning with this one.
margot
A delightful and unpretentious comedy where all the players, and the director too, seem to be having a lot of fun.From the first reel (or whatever--I first saw it on VHS) there was something markedly different about this movie, I mean different from other British comedies of the era. It seemed somehow very American, I thought. No, that wasn't it at all (I pondered further), it's just that the young leads aren't draped with the usual over-stylization that afflicts most British comedies of the time. And this, to my American eyes, makes them seem normal, i.e., American. It was routine in British movies to make all the characters broad caricatures of one sort or another, so that within the first ten seconds of an individual's appearance you could slot him or her neatly according to class, age, and region. This convention gave us some wonderful character actors (Nigel Bruce, Dame May Witty, Wilfred Hyde-White, Stanley Holloway) and enabled some English directors to develop a quick and cozy rapport with the audience (think of how Hitchcock characters are instantly comprehensible if not always sympathetic). But it also means that leading parts without a funny persona are rare birds indeed. And a clown can may cry but he can never be deep.This movie might be understood as just such a critique of such film-making conventions. Two normal middle-class kids, without any class pretensions or funny accents, find themselves in a tumbledown cinema, surrounded by a repertory company of grotesques. Such monsters are funny in small doses, but if there are too many of them the business can't prosper or be profound. At best it will be merely an amusing shop of curiosities.
