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Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The acting in this movie is really good.

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.

A "carnival" in British English is a procession through the streets accompanied by singing, dancing, eating, drinking, general merrymaking and dressing up in flamboyant costumes; London's famous Notting Hill Carnival is a good example. This film, however, is about a "carnival" in the American sense, that of a travelling funfair or circus. It is unusual in that it was produced by a major American studio (RKO Radio Pictures) with American actors but made in Germany by a director (Kurt Neumann) who was also making a German language version of the same story using German actors. It was originally intended to make the film as a 3D feature, but this plan was dropped, probably when the 3D craze ended as abruptly as it had begun. The "carnival" in question is an American travelling circus, touring Europe because there is too much competition in the States, which arrives in Munich. (You can tell that it's Munich because the local cathedral features in a number of shots, although the famous domes atop its twin towers seem to have been missing in 1954; possibly they had been damaged in the war). A local girl named Willie joins the show and is offered a job as assistant to Frank Collini, the high-dive artist. Exactly how Willie got her masculine-sounding name is never precisely explained, although it is always pronounced in the English way. When someone tries to germanicise it to "Villi" she corrects him. Frank trains Willie to become part of his act, which involves diving into a flaming tank of water from a great height. (I suspect that this detail was probably inserted to allow as many shots as possible of the lovely Anne Baxter in a swimsuit). The story is a melodrama based upon a love-triangle. Frank falls deeply in love with Willie, but she only has eyes for the handsome Joe Hammond, another carnival employee, even though Frank is decent and kind-hearted whereas Joe is an arrogant swine (or, in American usage, a "heel") who treats her badly. The film explores the complications arising from this triangle, including jealousy, theft, violence and a suspicious death. There is nothing particularly distinguished about "Carnival Story". Unusually for a crime drama from the fifties it was shot in colour, but the colours are rather dull and muddy. None of the acting contributions really stand out; at her best, as in "All about Eve", Anne Baxter could be a brilliant actress, but this is not one of her better films. The plot is little more than a standard melodrama, with the circus background and the German setting adding a touch of exoticism, at least for American audiences. It was obviously made on a relatively small budget and therefore lacks the spectacle of something like "The Greatest Show on Earth", Cecil B. DeMille's circus extravaganza from two years earlier. Neumann gets enough out of his cast to make the film watchable, but is perhaps not difficult to understand why it has faded into obscurity in the sixty years since it was made. 6/10

I could not help but compare this film to her earlier work "All About Eve", not because it was similar but because it was the first film I had seen her in since viewing "AAE".I was looking for the same great performances from her, and on occasions I was satisfied, yet the rest of the cast WAS NOT on the same page as her! She out-shined them all, which I admit was not that hard to do in this lack luster, poor, foreign film about United States Carnivals...and of course the typical stereo typing of the so called freaks prevailed...Still, I read another viewers comments on the film and I have to agree, it was rather odd of Anne's character, who was in fact, a Black Widow if you looked close enough...See it for Anne and Steve Cochran if not for the exploitation of Carnies....

Baxter is trained for the high-diving act, and her trainer/partner in the act waits until they both stand at the very top, 100 ft up. Then, as she prepares for her dive, he announces "Willie...I love you...and I want to marry you. I waited until now to tell you." Say what? Let's get this straight. You are a high diver, doing a dangerous routine. Everything about your act is highly structured and professional. To do otherwise is suicide. But in this case you'll make an exception?!Besides this unlikely and plain stupid event, the rest of the film is the standard "I love him, but he's so bad" routine. Add in the obligatory mid-century Freaks with their prejudiced behavior (fat lady is too happy, etc.) and you'll learn, as I experienced, why this movie is shown at 3 AM on television interspersed with "can-around" and "diet pill" offers.