Tag Archives: Malcolm Arnold

Defying Gravity

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The days when famous large scale traveling circuses like the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey toured the country are long past but they live on in the movies. Among the many films in that specific genre are Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Polly of the Circus (1932), Carnival Story (1954), The Big Circus (1959), The Flying Fontaines (1959), Circus World (1964) and the Canfinflas comedy El Circo (1943) from Mexico. One of my favorites though is Trapeze (1956), which came from an unlikely director, Carol Reed, who had previously directed such acclaimed features as Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949).

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The Forgotten War

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Hell in Korea (1956, British title: A Hill in Korea) may sound like a composite of a lot of platoon-in-jeopardy war movies from The Lost Patrol [1934] to Pork Chop Hill [1959]. Unlike the latter film, which was also set during the Korean War and depicted embattled U.S. soldiers trying to hold a strategic military position, Hell in Korea has the distinction of being the first U.K. production about the conflict which lasted from 1950-1953 and is interesting for its point of view which combines gung-ho jingoism with the grim realities of war. 

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Sean Connery as a Gypsy Grifter

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What’s your favorite Sean Connery role before he became famous as James Bond. This question might stump the average movie-goer but film buffs would probably choose one of his menacing villain roles in either Hell Drivers (1957) or Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (1959) or possibly his dashing romantic hero opposite Janet Munro in Walt Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), where he actually gets to sing. The latter is easily my favorite with the Irish mythology of leprechauns, pookas and banshees giving it the edge but there is something quite appealing about Connery trying his hand at comedy in the lesser-known British B-movie Operation Snafu (1961), which was released in the U.K. as On the Fiddle (It was also known as Operation War Head).  

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