Trapeze

Burt Lancaster - Mike Ribble
Tony Curtis - Tino Orsini
Gina Lollobrigida - Lola
Katy Jurado - Rosa
Thomas Gomez - Bouglione
Johnny Puleo - Max the Dwarf
Minor Watson - John Ringling North
Gérard Landry - Chikki

Carol Reed confided so little in his interviews, we can only speculate as to his motivations when he signed to direct Trapeze for Hecht-Lancaster in 1956. With two flops in a row, neither offset by emphatic critical praise, perhaps he was eager for a gilt-edged property, a film with as high a guarantee of success as possible. Trapeze was a big-budget Hollywood film set in one of show business's favourite milieus - the circus - shot in colour and Cinemascope and ornamented with two of the major American stars of the day, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, plus a sexy European star (Gina Lollobrigida), making her American debut. Whatever Reed was thinking when he accepted the offer, the decision seems to have been pivotal to his career; from 1956 on, he worked exclusively on American or American-financed movies - to the detriment of his art, in the opinion of some.

With a $4 million budget, Trapeze was one of the most expensive films of the year and was shot on location at the Cirque d' Hiver in Paris. For added verisimilitude, a number of celebrated European circus performers of the day were incorporated into the backdrop of the story. In archetypal sumptuous Hollywood fashion, it was found necessary to hire a whole circus troupe in order to be certain of obtaining the services of three of its acts. In circus-crazy Paris, it was even possible to attract Frenchmen to watch the stars of Trapeze wafted through the streets on a float. The reviews of the film were mixed, though even the friendliest critics, explicitly or implicitly, labelled the movie a big commercial extravaganza, enjoyable but empty. Moviegoers were generally entranced and when the cash registers stopped ringing, Trapeze showed a profit of $8 million, a figure which emerged when the scenarist and novelist Daniel Fuchs sued the producers for allegedly plagiarising their script from his short story, 'The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze'. Hecht, Hill and Lancaster settled out of court for $50 000, though insisting to the end that their source was Max Catto's novel The Killing Frost.

Even if Trapeze is indebted to the Fuchs story, its major source is certainly The Killing Frost, a sprawling pot-boiler by the once popular Catto, an English writer whose real name was Max Finkell. A steamy, old-fashioned melodrama in six parts, the novel relates the tragic history of Tino Orsini, from his youth in New York City to his career as a flyer in a European circus to his trial and execution for the murder of his estranged lover, Sarah Linden. The last fifth of the book is devoted to the sleuth work of one Father Francis, a latter-day Father Brown, who exonerates Tino by locating the real killer, Mike Ribble, a fellow aerialist for whom Sarah abandoned Tino. In an interesting twist, it was Tino whom Ribble actually wanted; though the homosexuality motif remains submerged. When he is exposed at last, Ribble commits suicide and, in a fatigued attempt at a drum roll of pulp tragedy, Catto writes about the end of the 'crazy, meaningless dance' of the three lives that have been extinguished.' Reed and his screenwriters transformed the English Sarah into an Italian named Lola so as to accommodate Lollobrigida and abbreviated the bulky tale considerably, dramatising only the circus episodes (about one-third of the novel) and lightening its morbid tone. Though the stormy love triangle is presented almost verbatim, it does not end in grief; rather Ribble (Lancaster) and Lola are united in the end, and Tino (Curtis) achieves an unparalleled professional triumph on the flying trapeze and a contract from John Ringling North with which to console himself.

The public's enthusiasm for Trapeze is a tribute to the professionalism that went into the movie, an expertly manufactured entertainment that is also tinted here and there by Reed's sensibility and artistry. The screenplay, by James R. Webb (with unaccredited assistance from Wolf Mankowitz), orchestrates a number of different elements - romance and adventurous displays of acrobatic brilliance; a father-son relationship; a brooding hero, a sleek-skinned juvenile and a sumptuous leading lady; a do-or-die climax in the main ring under a crowd-packed big top. Much of the story turns on self-serving intrigues - the efforts of Lola to infiltrate the aerial act of Mike Ribble and Tino Orsini; Ribble's attempt to manipulate Lola's feelings for him in such a way as to free Tino from her clutches and ensure that he will be a great trapeze artist; the plan of the circus owner, Bouglione (Thomas Gomez), to replace Ribble with another catcher.

The welter of passions, intrigues and jealousies of the three aerialists lead inexorably to the final episode in which Tino performs a 'triple somersault' under the most hair-raising conditions. The rivalry over Lola's affections that erupts between the two men is standard-issue hokum, yet it cleverly invests the sequence with an extra layer of emotionalism which is much needed. For one thing, it permits a suspense- building delay while Ribble tries to argue Tino into attempting the deadly stunt, highly desirable in view of the swiftness with which the test will be over once undertaken. The feat also presents Curtis with the opportunity to eclipse the now-hated Ribble, whose own try at executing a triple years before left him maimed. Down below, another turn of the screw is administered by Bouglione, the circus owner, who orders that the safety net is removed on the assumption incorrect but credible - that this will dissuade Ribble and Tino.

In the other artistic departments, art director Rino Mondellini and cinematographer Robert Krasker, with whom the director had been reunited after a hiatus of several films, ably served Reed. Initially Krasker had a problem with double images created by the high velocity of the trapeze artists, but having solved that, he achieved a fluid series of images, photographing the aerialists from every conceivable angle, his lens pursuing them with properly vertiginous results. With Krasker's help, Reed had found a way to make the vast empty spaces of Cinemascope visually arresting. Malcolm Arnold's score is undistinguished, but fortunately he had help from Johann Strauss, whose 'Blue Danube', with its swooping, graceful melodies, is the only musical equivalent one can imagine for the flying trapeze artists the film celebrates.