Recently watched: Carnival Story (1954). Tagline: “The story of a woman’s shame!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly).
A traveling American carnival is touring through post-war Germany. In Munich, the carnival barker Joe Hammond (Steve Cochran) encounters desperate local woman-on-the-skids Willi (Anne Baxter) when she pickpockets him. (Baxter instills Willi with an almost Joan Crawford-level lip-twisting intensity, but her German accent falters). Perversely, when Joe catches her, the attraction between them is immediate. Willi’s criminal act charms Joe (“You feel sorry for everything that wears skirts!” another character spits) - probably because Joe is an amoral conman, and he assumes Willi is a soulmate. He impulsively hires the guttersnipe to scrub dishes in the cook tent. Within no time, the circus’ new female arrival catches the eye of dashing high-diving artist Frank Collini (Lyle Bettger), who recruits Willi as his assistant, training her in the death-defying art of high-diving. Soon, Willi has swapped toiling in the cook tent to performing under the big top in a glamorous sequined leotard with the carnival’s headline act. The besotted Frank asks Willi to marry him. He’s thoroughly decent as well as handsome (Lyle Bettger’s butt and thighs look sensational in his one-piece costume), but Willi is conflicted: the suavely duplicitous Joe still exerts a powerful sexual hold over her. And it’s tinged with sadomasochism: Joe alternates between slapping Willi around and hungrily kissing her – which to be fair, seems to excite her. “Until I met you, I never knew how rotten I was!” Willi pants. “We belong together,” Joe growls back. “We’re two of a kind!” Willi is horrified, though, when Joe assures her, “We’re not going to let a little thing like you being married come between us!” With hideous inevitability, things soon spiral into jealousy, violence and tragedy …
Filmed on location in Germany and set in the tattered milieu of itinerant carnie folk, Carnival Story is an overwrought, amusingly sordid melodrama via RKO Radio Pictures. (We see titillating glimpses of the sideshow acts, including Siamese twins, a bearded woman, a snake handler and a sword swallower – very Diane Arbus. Note Groppo the hulking mute strongman, who observes everything silently and gradually emerges as a significant figure. As Groppo, Ady Berber presages Ed Wood stalwart Tor Johnson from Plan 9 from Outer Space). Kurt Neumann’s direction is creakily old-fashioned (rapturous music crashes and swells on the soundtrack when characters embrace or erupt into fistfights). But with the depravity, homoeroticism and emotional cruelty cranked-up a few more notches, it’s weirdly easy to imagine R W Fassbinder remaking Carnival Story. (The early scenes of Fassbinder’s Fox and His Friends (1975) unfold in a low-rent German carnival). And you’ve got to love a film with dialogue this pungent: "If you were starving to death, howling for food, I wouldn't throw you a rotten bone!" “You love to wallow in the mud!” “If you touch me again – I’ll kill you!” “We’re both bad, baby … that’s why we’re good for each other!”
Many of these lines are snarled by mid-century cinema’s supremely sexy bad boy, Steve Cochran. Carnival Story succeeds best as a “star vehicle” for the alluring Cochran, who specialized in depicting amoral anti-heroes, heels and tough guys you-love-to-hate with surprising complexity, even delicacy. A swarthy charmer with pomaded hair and an impressively lustrous chest pelt, Cochran effortlessly radiates testosterone and animal magnetism. Just try to tear your eyes off him when he’s onscreen. If you keep your expectations low, Carnival Story is the tawdriest of circus-set thrillers until a sixty-something Joan Crawford donned hot pants and top hat to play a ringmistress in Berserk (1967). Note that Carnival Story was filmed in a process called “Agfacolour”. The faded public domain print circulating online looks like it’s been overlaid with a retro Instagram filter.
Watch Carnival Story here:
Must have been one of the last RKO productions of Howard Hughes's chaotic reign, before the studio was sold off and went under altogether... Jx
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