This has got to be one of the worst movies to win the OSCAR AS BEST PICTURE of the year (1952) beating out the outstanding western HIGH NOON. Cecil B. De Mille proves again that it's all show with no substance in this agonizingly very long CIRCUS FILM with a mighty all-star cast. IVANHOE, MOULIN ROUGE and THE QUIET MAN which gave John Ford his 4th Oscar for Best Direction were the other nominated films. With De Mille, as usual, the spectacle was the thing. I suppose the film was grand fun and a profitable undertaking for the era, but critics scoffed yet again at a De Mille picture. How it ever won Best Film is anybody's guess!
James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Dorothy Lamour, Henry Wilcoxon, Gloria Grahame, Lawrence Tierney, Emmett Kelly were just part of the ensemble acting. De MIlle always made movies for the entertainment of the mass public and never lost sight of this fact. His next film was THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956) which proved to be another huge blockbuster. Again, it was all show with little substance and an incredibly ludicrous, inept script.
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