A struggling novelist and his wife inherit a 'fleapit' cinema in an Midlands glue-manufacturing town, which shudders to its foundations every time an express train passes. Abetted by an alcoholic projectionist, genteel cashier and doddering odd job man, they defy the wiles of a rival picture palace proprietor.
Basil Dearden's versatility makes his directorial career somewhat of a mystery, like John Huston's. Beginning as cutter and technical assistant to the great Will Hay, he progressed through 'issue' movies ( 'Frieda', the colossally influential 'Blue Lamp', 'Sapphire', 'Victim') into action blockbusters, and before his untimely death brought off a handsome, deft comedy thriller, 'The Assassination Bureau'. Otherwise he was not much noted for laughs, and 'The Smallest Show on Earth' came after a spell taking joint credit in the chair with his producing partner Michael Relph; so perhaps it is more heartfelt than most films Dearden signed.
Certainly it now seems doubly nostalgic. Within the narrative, the elderly staff hark back to the dear dead days of silent movies; yet the one they replay, Cecil Hepworth's remake of 'Coming Through the Rye', was only as far back in their time as 'The Godfather' in ours. The film's present day, 1957, is way back from ours: a time of steam trains, family firms of solicitors and all-white hooligans who wear collars and ties, when old people could safely walk home from work after dark.
But it was also an era when the telly (never mentioned as a rival here) was draining all cinemas, not just the Bijoux, of patrons. Their sites were being ravaged for supermarkets and bingo halls. The only danger in this story is that the Grand will snap up the site as a car park. In the end the tables are turned, and the Bijou's inheritors depart to Samarkand with £10,000 (say £166,000/$300,000 in today's money) after a plot development which unfortunately is neither plausible nor morally creditable.
That apart, the tone of gentle and graceful fun is maintained smoothly, with little slapstick or mugging on the part of the rich supporting cast. Sellers, 32, who had been off the big screen for two years, draws on his 'Willum' character in 'The Goons' for the tippling projectionist; Dame Margaret Rutherford, likewise absent for a while, is an endearing grande dame and as usual procures a tiny part for her husband, Stringer Davis; and the future Lord Miles, aged 50, bumbles about octogenarianishly as old Tom. Leslie Phillips, two years before 'Carry On Nurse' redefined him as a Lothario, is a friendly local lawyer. Sid James, then riding high as Tony Hancock's foil on TV, is against type in a cameo as the aggrieved father of the Bijou's enceinte usherette, wrongly suspecting Bill Travers.
Which brings us to the faintly anodyne central couple. It's customary in comedy for such as these to 'stand in' for the audience itself, guiding its reactions to the grotesques that encircle them. Bill and Virginia are as bland and bourgeois as anyone could ask, but in her jut-jawed resolution and his moments of putting his foot down there are hints of steel. Alas, a few years later 'Born Free', lions and conservation derailed both their careers. The reviewer who compared Travers with Cary Grant in his ability to convey exasperation and helplessness while remaining, at bottom, in control of the audience was not overstating the case. (Kenneth More, Travers's Fifties contemporary, was showing the same skill more consistently and genially in 'The Admirable Crichton'.)
The picture is beautifully art-directed. Mr Quill's wheezing projection gear, Mrs Fazackalee's cubby hole and old Tom's rusted radiators are evocative. The script packs in every gag about poverty-row Electric Theatre operations: the audience barracks and accompanies the action of the cheap westerns on screen, snogs in the back row, gasps for soft drinks during scenes set in the desert and stampedes for the exit before the National Anthem. Then there are the sight gags of a performance going wrong every which way under Travers's prentice hand, which top 'Singin' in the Rain'.
Too many British cinemas of the period were like the Bijou. Consciously or not, Dearden was writing the epitaph of his industry. Within a few years, not only would most small towns lack a picture palace, but the production end would be as Americanised as the Bijou's procession of oaters.
Dearden was an Ealing Studios alumnus. Ealing perished the year 'The Smallest Show on Earth' was released, but something of its spirit lingers in this 'Titfield Thunderbolt' redivivus: one of the very rare movies about how movies are screened.
Basil Dearden's versatility makes his directorial career somewhat of a mystery, like John Huston's. Beginning as cutter and technical assistant to the great Will Hay, he progressed through 'issue' movies ( 'Frieda', the colossally influential 'Blue Lamp', 'Sapphire', 'Victim') into action blockbusters, and before his untimely death brought off a handsome, deft comedy thriller, 'The Assassination Bureau'. Otherwise he was not much noted for laughs, and 'The Smallest Show on Earth' came after a spell taking joint credit in the chair with his producing partner Michael Relph; so perhaps it is more heartfelt than most films Dearden signed.
Certainly it now seems doubly nostalgic. Within the narrative, the elderly staff hark back to the dear dead days of silent movies; yet the one they replay, Cecil Hepworth's remake of 'Coming Through the Rye', was only as far back in their time as 'The Godfather' in ours. The film's present day, 1957, is way back from ours: a time of steam trains, family firms of solicitors and all-white hooligans who wear collars and ties, when old people could safely walk home from work after dark.
But it was also an era when the telly (never mentioned as a rival here) was draining all cinemas, not just the Bijoux, of patrons. Their sites were being ravaged for supermarkets and bingo halls. The only danger in this story is that the Grand will snap up the site as a car park. In the end the tables are turned, and the Bijou's inheritors depart to Samarkand with £10,000 (say £166,000/$300,000 in today's money) after a plot development which unfortunately is neither plausible nor morally creditable.
That apart, the tone of gentle and graceful fun is maintained smoothly, with little slapstick or mugging on the part of the rich supporting cast. Sellers, 32, who had been off the big screen for two years, draws on his 'Willum' character in 'The Goons' for the tippling projectionist; Dame Margaret Rutherford, likewise absent for a while, is an endearing grande dame and as usual procures a tiny part for her husband, Stringer Davis; and the future Lord Miles, aged 50, bumbles about octogenarianishly as old Tom. Leslie Phillips, two years before 'Carry On Nurse' redefined him as a Lothario, is a friendly local lawyer. Sid James, then riding high as Tony Hancock's foil on TV, is against type in a cameo as the aggrieved father of the Bijou's enceinte usherette, wrongly suspecting Bill Travers.
Which brings us to the faintly anodyne central couple. It's customary in comedy for such as these to 'stand in' for the audience itself, guiding its reactions to the grotesques that encircle them. Bill and Virginia are as bland and bourgeois as anyone could ask, but in her jut-jawed resolution and his moments of putting his foot down there are hints of steel. Alas, a few years later 'Born Free', lions and conservation derailed both their careers. The reviewer who compared Travers with Cary Grant in his ability to convey exasperation and helplessness while remaining, at bottom, in control of the audience was not overstating the case. (Kenneth More, Travers's Fifties contemporary, was showing the same skill more consistently and genially in 'The Admirable Crichton'.)
The picture is beautifully art-directed. Mr Quill's wheezing projection gear, Mrs Fazackalee's cubby hole and old Tom's rusted radiators are evocative. The script packs in every gag about poverty-row Electric Theatre operations: the audience barracks and accompanies the action of the cheap westerns on screen, snogs in the back row, gasps for soft drinks during scenes set in the desert and stampedes for the exit before the National Anthem. Then there are the sight gags of a performance going wrong every which way under Travers's prentice hand, which top 'Singin' in the Rain'.
Too many British cinemas of the period were like the Bijou. Consciously or not, Dearden was writing the epitaph of his industry. Within a few years, not only would most small towns lack a picture palace, but the production end would be as Americanised as the Bijou's procession of oaters.
Dearden was an Ealing Studios alumnus. Ealing perished the year 'The Smallest Show on Earth' was released, but something of its spirit lingers in this 'Titfield Thunderbolt' redivivus: one of the very rare movies about how movies are screened.