Roll up, roll up! Get your pompous overblown spectacle here! Thrill to Charlton Heston making certain the show goes on! Chill to the sight of James Stewart in full clown make-up! Spill (your lunch, probably) as Cecil B DeMille delivers another cod-Shakespearean voiceover!
With no extras at all, there’s precious little reason to fork out for the only DeMille film to win Best Picture Oscar (sentiment saw it beat High Noon and The Quiet Man to the big prize). The Technicolor cinematography may look as good as new, but DeMille’s heavy-handed style, the off-the-shelf morality tale plot and some unsubtle acting (particularly from Heston, who delivers EVERY-line-WITH-STACATTO- shouty-URGENCY) look very dusty.
The story about circus folk battling from town to town, with a dumb sub-plot involving Stewart’s clown being on the lam, is just a hook from which to hang chunks of Big Top spectacle. Buy a Cirque Du Soleil DVD instead.
