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Best movie of this year hands down!

Wonderful character development!

Very Cool!!!

Best movie ever!

THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH is a likable, small scale British comedy of the 1950s. It was directed by the reliably great Basil Dearden and features the tag team of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna a near decade before BORN FREE. They play a couple who buy a run-down old flea pit from slick agent Leslie Phillips and attempt to make a go of it, with most of the comedy arising from the oddball characters already in residence. Margaret Rutherford makes a fine usher, Peter Sellers isn't too overbearing as the projectionist (and also unrecognisable), while the best is Bernard Miles as the doddering old-timer. The humour is somewhat dated and the laughs somewhat genteel, but overall this is likable and timeless fare.

There is little to add to the mostly sympathetic reviews of this vintage (1956)comedy. Possibly 'charm' is the nearest one-word definition of its nostalgic appeal. It is highly unlikely that anything even remotely resembling a 'flea-pit' survives anywhere in England though their Gallic equivalents can still be seen in Paris albeit with a lick of paint and up-to-date projection, yet barely fifty years ago they were ubiquitous even in London - the Tolmer, P.O.W., Ionic etc. Like all good pastiche the film makers have caught the spirit of the flea-pit and added spin - in the main the flea-pits were run by average staff rather than the eccentrics-to-a-man staff of the Bijou. If nostalgia laced liberally with charm is your thing then this will prove a delight.

Character actors never come as grand and as enigmatic as the late Peter Sellers (1925 - 1980) whose greatest mainstream movie achievement would have to be the now legendary Pink Panther series. During too, the radio days of the nineteen-fifties in The Goon Show, with the late Spike Milligan (1918 - 2002) and Sir Harry Secombe (1921 - 2001).What was to be just one of four movies during 1957 by Peter Sellers, The Smallest Show on Earth here is his instalment in the persona of one not so young cinema projectionist Mr. Quill. By this time, he had already done the Ealing Studio classic The Ladykillers (1955), and this relatively small part in this 80-minute timepiece is of no exception.This charming little fable, via British Lion Films Limited, finds that quite unexpectedly modern and middle class couple Jean (Virginia McKenna) and Matt's (Bill Travers; 1922 - 1994) lives are about to change. She the doting housewife and he the up and coming novelist, receiving good news, they have become soul heirs to Matt's late uncle's cinema, the Bijou, literally meaning small and fashionable. It is in this tiny tale, and being told in the past tense, that the trip to the north of England has these dreamy pair coming straight back down to earth with much complication and bewilderment abound.They seem almost inseparable in their careers, having worked together in some eleven movies such as Born Free (1966), Ring of Bright Water (1969), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957) and The Belstone Fox (1973). With a tiny, blink and you'll miss him, bit part from one Sidney James (1913 - 1976) and fine co-starring from a very young and talented Leslie Phillips (B: 1924) as Robin, the mediator and solicitor Robin bringing a little sanity to the proceedings.The Smallest Show on Earth is a petite story that draws the line between the cinemas of the classic silent movie era and its constant struggle to adapt, and the inevitable onslaught of mass commercialism of the cinemas that have now grown into franchisees and chains. It is also the advent of the television that is ironically the main competitor for this new wave of Cinema in this 1957 movie. The tide of technological advancement waits for no one, sadly for the Bijou, its days, its old and tired staff and apparatus, and its movies, are now part and parcel of glories past.The coupling of the great and funny Margaret Rutherford (1892 - 1972) as the ticket and ice-cream seller, along with Bernard Miles (1907 - 1991) as Old Tom the ticket collector, with Peter Sellers is a fine and magnificent move, set against the seriousness of the couple from afar, these old nemeses with their differing standards set the humour and pace. Their comic bickering, nitpicking and constant, but harmless, backbiting toward one another are as sentimental and proud as is both their respect and fondness for this run down, clapped out old flea pit of a cinema, that all three have now become fully integrated, not with, but as the furniture.This is a truly heart-warming story, of the old romantic bygone age of the silent screen, the people who have been there and the realisation of the changing times. It's in the eyes of this young couple that the story has most effect, their City way's clashing against rustic and nostalgia's past, and their slowing fondness and respect for the peoples who still remain.

Husband-and-wife team Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna play a newly married couple who inherit a dilapidated cinema (and its elderly, incompetent and equally dilapidated staff), and try to restore it to something like it's original glory. However they soon discover that it's not going to be as easy as perhaps they first thought. There is competition from a huge modern cinema just across the street, which is in need of a car-park. The site of the old "Bijou" would be just the thing.This is a terrific comedy (written by Basil Dearden), and features Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Miles as the cinema staff, and Leslie Phillips as the Bijou owner's solicitor.Any American, or indeed any youngster, watching this movie might be slightly bemused, and consider it all a bit implausible. I can tell them that it's not, and so can any Brit over a certain age. When this film was made, every town in the UK had a "flea-pit" (i.e. it's very own "Bijou"). In the town in which I was raised, it was called "The Select".Events depicted in this movie happened at these cinemas on a regular basis. The films shown were usually as decrepit as the cinema itself. (In the case of the "Select" they were usually the awful B&W "horror" movies which no other theatre would show. If the film didn't break at least once, or a reel was put on the projector in time, and/or was not in the wrong order, you were there on a lucky night.) For all of us of the age, to re-watch this little memorial to the old flea-pit, is a real nostalgic blast from the past, and I defy any newcomers to the movie, not to warm to it, either from it's occasional pathos and/or it's hilarious comedy. So go on, take my advice, have a good scratch, and watch it. The film may be fiction, but what you see actually happened!