Prismark10
Carnival Story is flat melodrama of an American travelling circus in post war Germany.Willi (Anne Baxter) is a destitute German girl who picks the pocket of Joe (Steve Cochran) who works for the travelling circus. He seems kind hearted enough and gets her a job in the circus and she falls for Joe.However Frank (Lyle Bettger) a talented high dive act, teaches Willi to dive and both become a sensation in the show. Frank proposes marriage to Willi who accepts. Joe turns heel, he is nonchalant that she is marrying Frank, telling her that he can still have her after she has married.The trouble is Willi against her better judgment always carried a torch for bad boy Joe and then Frank dies in a suspicious accident, soon after he got into a fight with Joe over him creeping around his wife.The film is rather sluggish and the direction is rather workmanlike with its colour badly faded. It takes an age to get going and it is hard to like Willi who seems fatally attracted to sleazy Joe.
Spikeopath
Kurt Neumann directs Carnival Story, starring Anne Baxter, Steve Cochran, Lyle Bettger, George Nader and Jay C. Flippen. Music is by Willy Schmidt-Gentner and cinematography by Ernest Haller.Set in Munich, Germany, plot centres on the workings of Grayson's travelling carnival. The perils of love, infatuation and high diving acts come crashing together.Filmed in Agfacolor/Technicolor and unfurling its narrative in a carnival atmosphere, Carnival Story is pleasing enough on the eyes and ears. That is once you get used to Baxter's German accent that is! Willi (Baxter) is the fulcrum for everything that happens, caught picking the pocket of carnival worker Joe Hammond (Cochran), she ends up getting employed by the owner Charley Grayson (Flippen). From there she starts to literally rise up the ladder of success whilst indulging in a torrid love triangle with Joe and Frank Collini (Bettger).The temperature never gets above lukewarm settings, the narrative getting bogged down by a repetitiveness that grates entering the last third of film. There's much swooning and sexual discord, but it never steams the screen up, this in spite of Cochran's animal magnetism and Baxter's natural sexuality. While Flippen is under used and Bettger unsuited to the role of a swim trunk wearing high diver. It's all a bit flat in story telling terms, even the ending fails to close pic down with thrilling wonder. A missed opportunity here, but fans of Cochran doing bad boy are well served, as are those of us who have lusty lustations for Annie Baxter. 5/10
Karl Ericsson
Well, the story is not exactly unique. Beauty and the beast but maybe with a twist.The womanizer "business-man" gets his justice in the end and it is served by the idiot as far as mainstream intelligence goes. This idiot does however know what is right and what is wrong and why you have to act upon it. That is another kind of intelligence - moral intelligence and today very few possess it. But through pain their number may increase, maybe reaching the point of no return and then there will be changes. But if they don't hold on to it and teach it to their children, the passion will die again and we will have rich and poor again.If we want a society, in which the giant idiot will have his place of respect, we can have it. But then all material inequality has to go forever and are we up for it? Are we up for treating our fellow human beings as goals in themselves and not means for our goals? Are we up for justice? You don't need main-stream intelligence to know what is right. In fact, that kind of intelligence may fool you. It has its place and could be a tool for justice but without the intelligence of love, which is always the love for justice, main-stream intelligence is good for nothing.A simple story but somehow handled so that I could see the association that made out this review.
ma-cortes
A young girl (Anne Baxter) runs away and joins a traveling carnival troupe in Colonia (Germany), an American-owned circus in all its beautiful and sadness in the setting . She falls in love with her employer (Steve Cochran) and is hired by the ringmaster (J.C. Flippen). Later on , she is contracted by a somersault artist (Lyle Bettger), who teaches her the leap routine and soon becomes the main attraction but he has a fatal accident . Anne Baxter as an aerial acrobat dropping to swimming pool is interested in both men.The film is a melodramatic and romantic tale with the classic triangular love story through an European tour and meshing drama with events offstage . It deals with an U.S. carnival in Colonia sets the scene for sin , sex , passion and melodrama . The movie is wrought with romance and glamour but is a simple and tragic story about a scheming young girl and the men of whom she takes advantage . This dramatic flick packs an exciting final adding the beauty-beast myth . Extraordinary cast and good performances , especially from Anne Baxter and George Nader as a journalist , both of whom are top-notch under Kurt Neumann's correct direction . Furthermore , some scenes the actors perform their own stunts . After that , George Nader stayed in Germany where had success playing Jerry Cotton , a solid entry in German crime series . Fine camera work with exquisite images in Agfacolor and superb European location by cameraman Ernest Haller . The motion picture was well directed by Kurt Neumann , known director of classic Sci-Fi (The fly , Rocketship X-M , Kronos) , besides he realized at the same time the German version titled ¨Circus of love¨ with Curt Jurgens and Eva Bartok in similar roles .
AD
