Watch The Greatest Show on Earth For Free

You won't be disappointed!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

In 1952 both "High Noon" and "The Quiet Man" were nominated for Best Picture. It was also the year that the greatest of all musicals, "Singin' in the Rain" first appeared and yet the Academy didn't think it worthy of a Best Picture nomination, (though they did nominate "Ivanhoe"). So what did the Academy choose as the Best Picture of 1952? Why, that was the year the honor went to Cecil B. DeMille and "The Greatest Show on Earth", the biggest and arguably the best of all circus films, as well as one of the least deserving Best Picture winners of all time; not the worst perhaps but set it beside "High Noon" and "The Quiet Man" and it pales into insignificance.It's an epic that uses the real-life circus of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey as the basis for its spectacular and melodramatic plot and it crams a load of stars onto the screen for effect, (Charlton Heston, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Gloria Grahame, Dorothy Lamour and Jimmy Stewart, hiding, not very convincingly, behind clown make-up), and when it's on the high-wire or the flying trapeze it's certainly exciting and without the constraints of the Bible hanging over him, it may be DeMille's best film. So is it the greatest show on earth? Where sawdust and tinsel is concerned it might be but not when you have "The Quiet Man" and "Singin' in the Rain" waiting in the wings.

Against impossible odds?! Really. The circus. Give yourself way too much credit. "Double their cod-liver oil. Stat!"Very angry but efficient investor meeting.A prima donna celebrity to deal with? Oh how times have changed.This green screen is as poor as once I saw in a recent film. Good job for this film.That is your big finish!? That is remarkably lame.Holy cow! That is a rec d for obvious cuts in a 10 second span. Does Buttns know something about her broken ankle?Enter the jerk-off. Clause could stop screaming so much. Ah my god! How did this louse not choke on his own tongue!Do you see that dude in the crowd with a newspaper? He'd be watching his phone nowadays. The older woman is way ahead of the time with her purple hair. The kid is not happy Mr. Red Face. There's something behind the Buttons. Elephant for the save. Is that supposed to be something clever... a spinning arrow behind a scum's head?The Mob vs The Circus! But no smoking during yer fisticuffs boys. There is certainly plenty of sass-mouth in the circle. "Just someone to get mad at"... Wow! How women put up with so much for so long is a mystery. How many closeup shots of the crowd eating do we need in this thing!No train. No circus. Incredible disaster. You couldn't script two bigger jerks exchanging blood. You could easily loose an hour or more of circus crowd footage. It has inspired me to investigate how to play Netflix at higher speed.Surprisingly interesting despite the age and ridiculousness of how they hinted at almost all relationships. For example, two characters had a one-night stand years ago. Now she hates him. In the end, since their current interests either left for someone else or are dead, they just get married?!

"The Greatest Show on Earth" is harder to take seriously nowadays for a couple of reasons. One is the sheer spectacle factor. Everything was so pumped up that I could only throw out the sorts of comments that Mike, Servo and Crow throw at the crummy movies sent them by Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank. An example was a scene where a clown on stilts walks by and I called him the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.But more important is that we now have a consciousness about how we treat animals, and circuses have been known to mistreat them. That made the incident with the train all the more important: the animals get what they always wanted.As for this movie's Best Picture win over "High Noon", I can see how the blacklisting scared them into that. It would have never occurred to me to nominate this. The point is that it might be some fun stuff to watch, but it's no masterpiece. Although I will say that Jimmy Stewart's character wearing makeup throughout the whole movie was a good way to show that he was hiding his past.So, I can't recommend it.

DeMille had a thing for big, epic movies. This one runs almost 2 1/2 hours. It features fictional stories overlaid on the real Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey's circus and in fact filmed at its winter quarters in Florida. Some of the scenes involved actual circus performances. This was a glorious time for traveling circuses, something that seems to pretty much faded from our history.Of particular interest to me are scenes in the movie, documentary in style, showing how the roustabouts erected the large tents, then later how they took everything down.This movie came out when I was only 6, I didn't see it right away but do remember seeing it when I was quite young. The most vivid scene that remained with me was the trapeze artist falling without a net. I saw it again today on the Movies! channel.A 30-ish Betty Hutton is Holly, one of the featured trapeze artists, when Cornel Wilde as The Great Sebastian is hired. Even though the two trapeze artists are competitive with each other, always wanting to try something more difficult, a love affair also blossoms. Then there is the fall that Sebastian takes, Holly blames herself for challenging him. When he returns from the hospital he seems fine but his right hand is paralyzed.Also 30-ish Charlton Heston plays the hard-driving circus master Brad Braden. Perhaps the most interesting role is James Stewart as a clown, we never see his face without makeup but his voice is recognizable as soon as he speaks. He is being hunted for a possible murder.