A Tale of Three Swingers: “Trapeze”

When I was a kid, I was entranced by the ads for Trapeze, a circus drama featuring lots of high-flying action and three bona fide Hollywood stars : Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Gina Lollobridgida. The sets and spangly costumes looked dazzling to a small girl. I wouldn’t have much cared that the film’s director was Carol Reed, a Brit who’d helmed such taut masterworks as Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949). (In 1968 he was to have his big Hollywood moment, winning the Best Director Oscar for his work on a delightful film musical, Oliver!)

 Flash forward to 2025. After watching 1957’s Sweet Smell of Success, produced in part by Burt Lancaster’s own company, I read that Tony Curtis was cast as the ambitious young press agent kowtowing to Lancaster’s sinister gossip columnist largely because Lancaster had enjoyed working with Curtis on Trapeze. So, thanks to the goodly supply of vintage films on DVD at my local library, the time seemed right to check it out.

 The story of Trapeze is simple enough: every character is in love with the drama and the spectacle of the circus. This particular troupe is based in Paris, and boasts the usual combination of clowns, animals, dancing girls, and acrobats. We immediately get to the heart of things as aerialist Mike Ribble (a buff-looking Lancaster) climbs to the rafters to swing into a daring triple somersault. Once he’s performed the dangerous stunt, he’s supposed to be caught by the waiting hands of a second trapeze artist. But something goes awry, and he falls, bouncing out of the safety net and onto the ground. All of this happens before the opening credits: when we next see Mike he’s an embittered man, working for the circus as a rigger and effortfully walking with a cane. 

Along comes Tony Curtis as brash, bouncy Tino Orsini, American son of an old-school aerialist. He’s heard that Mike is the only flyer in the world who can teach him the triple somersault. Refusing to accept Mike’s rejection, he uses his talents and his easy charm to worm his way into the older man’s heart. (One of the film’s most endearing moments shows the two walking down a Paris street. The irrepressible Tino upends his body to continue walking on his hands. That’s when Mike, not willing to be totally upstaged by his new protégé, does the same. The scene fades out on the two of them, side by side, traversing the Paris trottoir upside down.)  Tino wants to learn; and Mike discovers he wants to teach. What could be better? 

 But of course there has to be a fly in the ointment. And Lola, as played by Italian “it” girl Gina Lollobrigida, is a pretty fly indeed. Originally the only female on a team of Italian acrobats, she slithers her way into the aerial act by using her sex appeal to alternately romance both Tino and Mike. Of course it all comes to a head on the night when American impresario John Ringling North is visiting, looking for acts to import.

 Frankly, I was rather disappointed by the big aerial climax when, without a net, the triple somersault is once again attempted. After all the build-up, I’d expected something far more spectacular. But the film has an effectively rueful ending in which some achieve greatness and some turn it down. Lancaster and Curtis once again make a memorable team. As for the busty, glamorous Lollobrigida, I couldn’t really decipher what her character was about. Maybe, simply, a combination of Eve and the serpent. 

 

Consider Yourself a Fan of “Oliver!”

The Sixties were big years for BIG musicals. In an era when television was on the rise, these costly extravaganzas showed off the pleasures of large-scale spectacle that only a movie screen could accommodate. Winners of the Best Picture Oscar during the Sixties included such dazzling and ambitious entertainments as West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Sound of Music (1965). And other nominees included Mary Poppins and Funny Girl.

  But wait! Wasn’t there another Broadway musical smash that ended up nabbing the Best Picture Oscar after the film version was released in 1968? Yes, indeed, but Oliver! was something of a horse of a different color. That is to say, Lionel Bart’s stage musical version of the Charles Dickens novel originated not in New York but in London. Musical theatre has always been considered an intensely American art form. But Oliver! showed, long before Andrew Lloyd Webber, that the forces behind British theatre could triumphantly learn from their American cousins.

 In adapting Oliver Twist, set among pickpockets and thieves on the loose in Victorian London, Bart (the talented son of Jewish immigrants from Galicia) toned down the casual anti-semitism of Dickens’ original story. He cut back on but did not eliminate the gruesome aspects of Oliver’s milieu, while making sure to keep intact the almost cloying Dickensian sweetness that shows itself in such highly sentimental songs as “Where is Love?” Though Bart’s plot contains the grimmest of murders, as well as a heart-tugging reunion, what audiences remember best is the liveliness of Fagin and his gang of young hoodlums, who certainly seem to enjoy their work snatching the  plump purses  of London’s well-heeled citizenry.

 I understand the original stage production made good use of a stylized unit set that didn’t pretend to depict a genuine London street scene. But film, of course, is a far more realistic medium, and the film’s producers aimed for a visually arresting canvas, crammed full of Victorian detail. When the Artful Dodger encourages shy young Oliver Twist to “Consider Yourself One of Us,” he leads the boy on a romp through crowded Covent Garden streets where grocers and other vendors ply their wares. (In a warehouse full of hanging sides of beef, the pair even romp straight through a large carcass that a butcher with a large cleaver has just divided in two.)

 The director in charge of all this on-screen activity is Britain’s Carol Reed, much admired for such gritty urban dramas as The Third Man and Odd Man Out. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I believe this was his only musical. Still, he knows a thing or three about teeming cities, and there’s no one better at ratcheting up suspense. In portraying London’s seedy underbelly, he gives this Oliver! a genuine sense of looming terror that’s rare for musical entertainments.  On the flip-side, when Oliver enjoys a brief respite in the home of a wealthy man, we see (to the strains of “Who Will Buy?”) the street filled with a whole magical parade of bandsmen, milkmaids, and other handsome, healthy folk.

In the where-are-they-now? department, the adorable boy who plays Oliver is now happily retired from showbiz and working as an osteopath. Jack Wild, the impish scalawag who earned an Oscar nom as the Artful Dodger, remained an actor, but succumbed at age 53 to drink and drugs. Oliver Reed, who played the murderous Bill Sikes, similarly cut his life short through reckless behavior. But hurrah for Ron Moody, a deliciously nimble and mischievous Fagin, who survived to the ripe old age of 91.  

 

 

 

 

When Irish Eyes Aren’t Smiling: “Odd Man Out”

For St. Patrick’s Day, it seems only right to focus on a film with an Irish pedigree. I could come up with something sweet and lively like John Ford’s The Quiet Man or Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Or perhaps a luminous animated adventure like The Secret of Kells. I’ve already written, with great affection, about Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-snubbed but wonderful The Banshees of Inisherin.

 So instead I’ll go back in time to praise a classic film by a Britisher, Carol Reed. He’s best known for directing Orson Welles and company in a taut international thriller, The Third Man (1949). And 20 years later he won an Oscar for helming a splashy film adaptation of a Broadway musical, Oliver! But some (including Reed’s biographer) consider his masterpiece to be a 1947 film set in Ireland during the time of The Troubles. It’s called Odd Man Out, Two master directors, Roman Polanski and Sam Peckinpah, cite it as one of their favorite films of all time. It also was the recipient of the inaugural BAFTA award for Best British Film.

 Critics have said that Odd Man Out dramatically captures the mood of post-World War II Europe, a time when dread and cynicism reigned supreme. Its backdrop is the ongoing street battle between Protestant and Roman Catholic forces over control of Northern Ireland, though the politics of the matter are not really discussed. Instead this is fundamentally a human rather than a political story, set in a Belfast that is never named. The focus is on a small cell of rebels who have been called on to commit a robbery in support of their cause. Their leader, Johnny, has been in hiding for six months following his escape from prison. He’s determined to do his part, though his weakened physical condition makes others beg him to stay behind. Of course the inevitable happens: he lacks the agility to make a quick escape, and suddenly he’s a fugitive.

 Johnny’s local fame is such that he’s immediately recognized by much of the citizenry, while his comrades too are endangered by his mishap. We see a cross-section of city life:  a priest who supports him, a well-heeled woman who betrays him, an eccentric who haplessly tries to help, lovers who stumble on him as he’s hiding—badly wounded—in a storage shed. His goal, in his increasingly disoriented state, is to get to the harbor. But the arrival of the young woman who loves him changes the equation, leading to an ending that’s intensely dramatic but also foreordained.

.Most of the actors in Odd Man Out, beautifully playing slice-of-life roles, were affiliated with Dublin’s famed Abbey Theatre. But the leading man was an Englishman, James Mason, long before his Hollywood successes in such films as A Star is Born, North by Northwest and Lolita. Richard Burton noted in his diary that the part was originally offered to another Brit, Stewart Granger. But Granger, thumbing through the script, concluded that the role wasn’t big enough to interest him. What he overlooked was the fact that the part of Johnny—though short on dialogue—is intensely dramatic. He may not have much to say, but his plight, as a wounded man watching his death approach, is riveting. Wrote Burton, “It's probably the best thing that Mason has ever done and certainly the best film he's ever been in while poor Granger has never been in a good classic film at all.” According to Burton, “Granger tells the story ruefully against himself.”

 May the road rise up to meet you!

 

 

“Third Man” Out

The Third Man is a tricky little movie, one that’s full of surprises for the unwary. For one thing, the title is deliberately misleading. The identity of that mysterious third man is, in the scheme of things, quite beside the point. And the zither theme that continues throughout the film is so jaunty that you suspect you’re being prepared for a joyous romp. Something Fellini-esque, maybe? (Hardly true, as it turns out.) 

Finally, The Third Man is usually considered an Orson Welles tour-de-force. In fact, he didn’t direct (Carol Reed did), though he’s given some kudos for unbilled contributions to the screenplay written by British novelist Graham Greene. And his role in the film, though pivotal, is fairly small in terms of screentime. Still, he makes an indelible impression, and The Third Man’s intensely dramatic stylistics owe much to such Welles masterworks as Citizen Kane and The Stranger.

 One thing Welles apparently did contribute: the film’s most famous line. During a key conversation with Joseph Cotten on a Viennese Ferris wheel, he quips sardonically, as only Welles can, “In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Bingo!

 The Third Man, released in 1949, goes beyond the Americana of Citizen Kaine and The Magnificent Ambersons to cast a cold eye on post-Nazi Europe. Its view of a Vienna awash with occupation forces and petty criminals is totally chilling: almost everyone in the cast seems on the take, or suffers from conflicting allegiances Like, for instance, the leading lady (Alida Valli), who in continually switching sides proves herself to be a true femme fatale. And Americans in this world don’t come off any better than their European counterparts. Joseph Cotten’s character, a two-bit novelist visiting from the U.S., is almost terminally naïve. And then there’s the ominous Harry Lime. Today I suspect we’re particularly sensitive to the enormity of Lime’s shenanigans, watering down penicillin for his personal profit, and shrugging off the fact that children are dying – or worse.

 The world of The Third Man is that of film noir, international-style. There’s no question it looks fabulous. If the origins of film noir tend to connect with Raymond Chandler’s prematurely seedy L.A., this movie proves that the Old World is even more decadent and down-at-the-heels than the New. Vienna, in The Third Man, is a heady combination of dilapidated grandeur and police state. We see, usually by moonlight, the rococo buildings and twisty streets of the old city, as well as the shadowy depths of its sewers. (The film’s one Oscar went to Robert Kasker for his moody black-&-white cinematography, which take full advantage of location shooting.)

 I also commend the filmmakers for their wonderful collection of faces. The bit players in The Third Man are often wonderfully eccentric, even macabre, to look upon. They frequently speak in untranslated German, so that we share with Joseph Cotten a sense of displacement and being the odd man out. The dapper Cotten, one of the original Mercury Players, seemed to specialize in being a foil to Welles: in films like Citizen Kane he was the nice guy who both admired and ultimately couldn’t help resisting Welles’ powerfully physical presence. He plays that role here as well. But let’s not forget Hitchcock’s 1943 Shadow of a Doubt, in which the sinister side of Cotten comes fully into the ligh.

 

 

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