CIRCUS WORLD is a lavish bit of spectacle that acts as a nice showcase for John Wayne's naturalistic talents. He plays a circus owner who decides to bring his Wild West act to Europe with disastrous consequences, forcing him to go on a journey of self-realisation that sees him hooking up and making amends for his old life.I'm not a huge fan of circuses in cinema unless they're used for horror and suspense flicks, in which case they become a great setting (watch CIRCUS OF HORRORS and CIRCUS OF FEAR to see what I mean). However, Henry Hathaway shoots the Big Top very well here, and his circus scenes are filled with excitement. I can leave the cruel animal bits but the high wire acts are fantastic, the bits with the clowns are funny, and the Wild West show at the film's opening recalls BEN HUR-style spectacle.Wayne is the figure who holds this all together with a dauntless man-of-action performance. He's joined by a slightly tragic past-her-prime Rita Hayworth, who still impresses as his lost love, and Claudia Cardinale who is a vision of beauty as his adopted daughter. The film looks expensive and despite the slow pace it keeps you watching from beginning to end, never failing to entertain despite the odd shortcoming.

Just to set the record straight, this movie was shot in Super Technirama 70 (which is just Technirama but called this when shown in 70mm).This is a format with 8 perforation horizontally moving camera negative like VistaVision but with a slight anamorphic squeeze to take in a full Scope-like frame. It can be printed with an additional squeeze to render CinemaScope-compatible 35mm 4-perf prints with greater sharpness due to the double-sized camera negative (intermediate and print stocks can carry a great deal better resolution as they do not need to be as "fast" as camera negative) and billed as Technirama. Or unsqueezed and printed onto 70mm and billed as Super Technirama 70.And, yes, it was officially a Cinerama film. No, not what most of us would call "real" Cinerama with the triple camera and three projectors but Cinerama owns the trademark and can apply it to anything they wish. Just as IMAX slaps their name on crappy digital projection nowadays.

One of the previous poster's referred to this NOT being a Cinerama film. He's right, it's not. However, he alludes to it having been advertised as such in some cities. Chicago was one of those. Circus World premiered in Chicago at the McVicker Theater on Madison just west of State. (That theater had previously screened How the West was Won, a TRUE Cinerama film. HTWWW ran there for what seemed to be a year before moving to the neighborhood theaters.) As stated, they had three screens to fill. The newspaper ads even used the Cinerama trademark, (the accordion folded logo). A friend saw it there with his parents, and all he talked about was the ship capsizing sequence. I saw the flick on TV, and, that seemed very anti-climactic. All in all a pretty underwhelming film. One big fluke, near the beginning, John Wayne is being wheeled around the circus ring on top of a stagecoach at full speed. He then shoots burning lamps (or something) off the tops of poles held by assistants in front of the stands full of spectators. Um, wouldn't the bullets being fired hit at least some of those folks behind the targets ? Maybe my memory isn't so good.

I´m a big John Wayne Fan but this movie is very boring. John Wayne is acting like he thought the same in 1964. He is totally uninspired - like the whole movie is. 133 minutes and I fell asleep after 80 minutes. Endless scenes with animals, clowns and artists (one of them Rita Hayworth who looks like she will fall asleep every moment, too). In the beginning a ship is sinking and I thought I´m looking "Titanic" and in the end the circus tent is burning. But these scenes are without sense, only action - boring action. One of the movies of John Wayne you don´t need to see.