Trapeze
TRAPEZE. (Odeon, Marble Arch.)
IN Trapeze Sir Carol Reed has (I feel tempted to say, at last) directed a film that will, I suspect, be in both senses popular. Not, per- haps, one of the greatest directors, he is certainly one of the most versatile and his style, if not particularly personal, is always extraordinarily attractive, his treatment of people—particularly the simple, the vaguely nonconformist, the good-sort misfits—is always moving and delicate. Trapeze is, to my mind, an uproarious success. The critical clock in the back of my head told me• firmly it went on about twenty minutes too long, but I was sad when the lights went up and we left the glitter- ing showring—the spangled elephants, the clowns, the enormous spaces under the roof where men criss-crossed in the air without, apparently, taking the smallest notice of gravity. What Trapeze manages to do is to make this alien, tinsel world solid and moving, to make us care about the ethics of 'pure' and spurious trapezing (a thing I would never have expected to take very much to heart), and make the curious gladiatorial mentality of those who daily go into danger to give the public a thrill as understandable as that of the more normally dedicated performer who spends a lifetime of self-discipline perfecting some particular talent.
The story is both simple and meandering, and it is a measure of the director's skill and the actors' entire sincerity that we never miss a step, mistake a movement, or confuse the emotional issue. It concerns the efforts of a crippled ex-flyer (that is, the man who flies off a trapeze), now turned catcher (that is, the man who catches the flyer), to train a youngster to do the almost impossible 'triple' (that is, three somersaults in the air before he is caught); and of the complications that arise in their simple and dedicated lives when a girl with only a few elementary tricks at her com- mand is put into their act to attract the public. What is subtle about this fairly corny tale is the development of the characters within it, the changes (through feints, misunderstandings, backslidings) not only of mood but of quality, almost of personality and appearance, between them at the beginning—where we meet an oafish, dead-eyed giant leering in a café at a young woman whose beauty is almost blanked out by her ludicrous vivacity—and at the end where, sad-eyed but surfeited with happiness, exhausted and at peace, they look out across the roofs of Paris. As the catcher Burt Lancaster acts with a strange subter- ranean sincerity, a kind of slow, exact, and at times terrifying intensity that affects first his body (walk, movements, hands) and gradually his face and eyes: a performance I found almost unbearably moving. As the boy flyer, Tony Curtis is young, brash, and tiresome— all as he should be—and as the girl Gina Lollobrigida, talking English for the first time and Italian when she flies into a rage, does very well. She is a star in the old tradition that demands, not virtuosity, not variety, but a steady, recognisable personality at all times. Her charms and her abilities are all very obvious : magnificent eyes in a pretty (not, I think, beautiful) face, an exceptionally beauti- ful body (as opposed to the mere 'good figure' of fashion), and a personality simple, good- natured, robust, and unmysterious, that re- mains constant and unmistakable whatever language she speaks and whatever part she is given to play. In this case her external splen- dour and inward simplicity strike sparks against Burt Lancaster's outward ruggedness and suggestion of inner complexity and make their dual performance something quite distinct from their individual parts in it. It is their acting—and that of half a dozen circus folk— that raises the film beyond the merely exciting, spectacular and touching. To the director must go the credit for sensitivity and robustness to- gether, for some glorious moments of tension and beauty in the air, and a mounting climax towards the end that had not only my heart in my mouth but my stomach in my boots for minutes at a time; but it is the actors that have given Trapeze its humanity, its peculiar and pleasant glow of warmth. ISABEL QUIGLY
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