Wonderfully offbeat film!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Absolutely the worst movie.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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.

When young marrieds Virginia MacKenna and Bill Travers (the real-life married couple, best known for "Born Free") are bequeathed a dilapidated cinema, they plan to sell it to a local mega-cinema magnate who wants to turn it into a parking lot for his "Grand" right across the street. But when they realize that he's decreased his offer, thinking they are too scared to fight him, they plan to make him up his offer by making him think they are re-opening it. Travers' deceased great uncle left behind a staff probably too long in the tooth to work, but out of loyalty, they keep them on. When word gets out of the deception, the couple decide "what the heck..." and re-open it anyway, leading to humorous circumstances and complications for their rival.A sweet and affectionate tribute to the "mom and pop" owners of small businesses threatened by corporate chain owners, this is a must for film history buffs. MacKenna and Travers are extremely likable, and they will have you rooting for them from the moment Travers finds out that he's been given the major bequest in his great-uncle's will. Margaret Rutherford is given the opportunity to loose the eccentricity so prevalent in her other roles (especially the very tweedy Miss Marple) and plays a rather sour-faced ticket taker. Bernard Miles, as the sarcastic handyman/usher, is delightfully droll, and you won't even recognize Peter Sellers as the alcoholic projectionist who promises to quit drinking forever once the theater actually prepares to re-open. Francis De Wolff combines the personalities of every classic movie evil businessman with his phoniness and condescention to the young couple. The screenplay is very direct, and in spite of the possibility of potential sappiness, the script never goes there, and sticks to a very simple mood. Sexy June Cunningham is amusing in her brief role as the voluptuous ice cream girl Travers hires after finding all the local boys fighting over her. A very amusing scene has the theater temperature raised to the highest it can go during the showing of a desert movie and the women rushing in immediately afterwards to serve cold beverages. The result is a simply told tale of the small fish taking on the big bully fish and coming out of it without being fried.

I won't re-say everything that the people who've written comments about the film have already said. It's quite a delightful little film. It's easy for modern audiences to imagine that nothing in black and white could be remotely as funny as any modern film, but after the movie hits its stride the laughs come fast and furious.The one major flaw is that apart from being "morally dubious," the ending smacks of deus ex machina. The film could and should have gone on for another thirty minutes to bring the contention between the two theaters to a more believable conclusion. It's as if the writers suddenly realized they only had about five minutes left of a strict time limit and grabbed at the first straw they could find to wrap it up. But that shouldn't detract from all of the movie BUT the ending, which is a perfectly delightful little comedy.The thing that interests me the most is the historical perspective the movie offers on the era in which it is set. Modern filmgoers might be surprised to see how narrow and small the Bijou's screen is, compared to modern theaters'. It's a 1.33:1 screen, 4:3 like "full-frame" TV sets. That's how the size of television screens was set, in fact; the same as movie theaters of the day.The problem was that people who got televisions were getting in the habit of staying home with the tube rather than going out to the cinema and having to put up with the crowds; in fact, television is specifically mentioned in Smallest Show as being a reason for the decline of business at the Bijou. (Funny how history is repeating itself in this era of the DVD player and home theater.) So, the film industry was looking at doing whatever they could to get butts back in seats.One of those things was cinemascope—or what we would call "widescreen." It is mentioned here in this film, in passing; when the married couple and their lawyer are putting on that conversation for the benefit of the eavesdropper, one of the things they suggest doing is upgrading to cinemascope. The studios hoped that by showing their audience a wider picture than TVs could, they would entice people back to the theater. (They probably did not anticipate all the contention this would eventually cause when widescreen movies were shown on TV-compatible formats, with some people complaining about part of the picture being chopped away and others complaining about black bars on their screen.) Color movies were another such innovation, and so was 3D.But amusingly, and probably unintentionally, Smallest Show also hits upon some of the other things filmmakers tried—most notably William Castle. Castle was famous for enhancing the experiences of his films with gimmicks to make the audience feel like they were "participating" in the film—wiring up theater seats with joy buzzers, flying skeletons over the audience, and so on. If he COULD have shaken the entire theater when a train pulled in on screen, he probably would have. (Although, come to think of it, the Sensurround system a decade later would do more or less exactly that.) And turning up the heat during desert movies would probably have been right up his alley, too—though in his case, cashing in with cold drink sales would probably have been an afterthought.

I vote this movie 9/10 and I love it. I won't say anything about the plot or characters as it's all been said by now....but. If I had written this movie now, I think I would have had the 'Grand' burn down under other circumstances. Maybe a lightning strike starting a fire during a thunderstorm, or an electrical fire - anything except old Tom going out with a drum of fuel oil. A more dramatic ending could have been achieved under these circumstances, and it would also have spared the young couple agonizing with their conscience in their exit from the scene,which was hollow. The ending was definitely a bit tatty, but apart from that - excellent.