This rare early Frank Capra film, transferred (minus its score*) from a hit B’way musical with star and some original cast intact*, isn’t much admired now, but it’s a key film in Capra’s rise at Columbia Pictures. A big step up in scale & technique, it also hits some of the same social-strata/populist depression-era targets that would largely define Capra, even though the show opened in pre-Depression 1928. On stage, an excuse for jack-of-all-clown-trades Joe Cook to show his stuff, he saves the day when a financially struggling circus goes on strike, forcing him to do all the acts. (No skill beyond him, Cook’s particularly striking on the slack-wire, yet never got another top feature role; like many a stage star on film, lots of talent, but the wrong temperature.) The setup involves the late-owner’s daughter now running the circus into the ground. She likes Cook, but loves a well-to-do city boy, managing to lose the circus twice: first to swindlers; then to fire. The ensuing panic and riot, stunningly realized by Capra & regular lenser Joseph Walker, a tryout for future achievements like the opening reel of LOST HORIZON/’37. (Elsewhere, Walker’s gorgeous atmospheric lensing and how’d-he-do-that fluid tracking thru carny crowds Gold Medal stuff for the period.) Even with comic set pieces that don’t know when to stop, there’s something satisfying in how the story sidesteps expectations, it’s absurdist end-of-the-world nihilism something Capra wouldn't dare attempt in the future.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Of that original cast, the guy doing a lousy Harpo Marx imitation is Dave Chasen, soon to ditch showbiz for food-biz with his eponymous Hollywood hangout/eatery. Liz Taylor had their shockingly bland chili sent to her sets all over the world.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The score that went missing by Milton Ager & Jack Yellen, best known for ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ added into the show a year after it opened and heard here played on the calliope by Clarence Muse.
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