Bill Travers and his wife, the pellucid Virginia McKenna, are a lower middle-class English couple who inherit some valuable property in a small town, or so they think. A trip to Sloughingham (or whatever it is) reveals the property to be nothing more than a dilapidated old movie theater, the Bijou, with a barely sentient staff of three: Margret Rutherford is the ticket taker and cleaning woman, Peter Sellers is the projectionist given to drink, and Bernard Miles a moth-eaten usher. It's not made clear what they've been doing because the place is filthy and falling apart, and it hasn't shown a film since silent days.Well, it's all pretty hopeless until their friend alerts them to the fact that the man who own the GREAT BIG THEATER next door wants to buy the property, demolish the Bijou, and build a parking lot. The price he offers is what's known as a low ball -- too low. Travers and McKenna decide to gull their rich neighbor into thinking that they actually plan to turn the Bijou into a working business, begin showing movies again, and become competitive with the grand theater next door. They all pour everything they have into bringing the Bijou back to life and they succeed. The only problem is that they can afford to show nothing but B Westerns.It turns out not to be a problem at all. The audience is anarchic, youngsters throwing peanuts at one another and making out in the rear seats. They jeer when the film stops and burns and when a fallen villain rolls uphill. By various means, pretty girls sell cigarettes and candy, for instance, they improve their take until they actually make a small profit. By this time the tycoon next door is convinced. But instead of building a parking lot, he's going to buy the Bijou at an elevated price and find a place for the triad that maintain it.It evokes smiles rather than laughter. The actors are all professional. Peter Sellers stands out if only because once,when his film is all over the floor during a show, he casts an agonized stare at a nearby empty whiskey bottle. Virginia McKenna is a paragon of purity. Shame on you if you think of her legs. Sit back, go with the flow, and you'll probably enjoy it. It's not an Ealing masterpiece but it's diverting and, in its own quiet way, reassuring.

"The Smallest Show On Earth" is the kind of comedy they used to churn out in England with ferocious consistency; despite its charms not one to remember except for the presence of the greatest film comedian of the sound era just coming into his own.That comedian is Peter Sellers, and "Smallest Show" gives him fourth billing as alcoholic projectionist Mr. Quill, one of three employees at a broken-down cinema in the dregs of England who faces unemployment when a young couple inherits the place with plans to sell out.It's a small role, in a small film, but Sellers as Quill is very good, better in fact than he was earlier fare like "The Ladykillers" (great film, small part) and "The Naked Truth" (big part, lousy film). Here we see Sellers for the first time as the funnyman who can tug on your heartstrings, working your sympathies with just a furrowed eyebrow or shuffling of feet. From 1959 to 1965 he had as good a run in movies as any star ever did, and this 1957 effort served as springboard.That's not so much of a reason to see "Smallest Show" for non-Sellers fans, so here's another: Sellers doesn't even deliver the best performance. The other two staffers, Bernard Miles as Old Tom the doorman and Margaret Rutherford (an Oscar winner a few years later) as Mrs. Fazackalee the ticket woman are every bit as good, while Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna as the young couple make for pleasant company. If not for the fact the jokes are weak, and the storyline thin, this would be a true winner, rather than just a mildly worthwhile Ealing Studios-wannabe relic.The main joke in "Smallest Show" centers around the dilapidated state of the old theater, or "kinema", that the couple inherits. The projector threatens to fall apart whenever a train passes. The ceiling is festooned with cobwebs. Portraits of Theda Bara and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. line the walls, and the features on offer are ancient cowboy films starring "Drifting Slim Stanley, Deputy U.S. Marshall". It's at times a stirring tribute to the movie business in its infancy, especially one scene where Mrs. Fazackalee plays her house organ to the flickering light of an old silent. But it never gels as a story."I'm sure there's a business like show business, but somehow I don't think this is it," McKenna's Jean jokes when the couple first get an eyeful of the place. That's about as good a one-liner as this film manages, despite the presence of "Ladykillers" writer William Rose as a scripter here.Director Basil Dearden makes sure we get plenty of cute scenes featuring Travers and McKenna struggling with the way things operate in their new place. The plot, what there is of it, centers around the couple's attempt to make a go at running the movie house, or at least making it look like they are, in order to persuade the owner of a rival theater to buy them out. The rival owner resorts to some shady tricks, but one never really has to worry overmuch how things turn out, as it falls together rather conveniently.The charm's the thing, the only thing, in watching Travers' reaction when accepting a chicken for admission, or Quill and Fazackalee at each other's throats regarding their new bosses' spending priorities: "My equipment is more important than your rats," Quill shouts, showing off Sellers' ability to melt into a thick northern English old-man accent with the help of some clever makeup.Unlike his earlier films, he really gives you a lump in the throat in this one, struggling with the bottle or skipping along a sidewalk after a good day at the box office, making you understand that the secret to Sellers was never just clever accents or physical pantomime but the preternatural empathy he brought to every part, beginning with this one.

1957. Paul McCartney (15) and John Lennon (17) meet while playing for a local skiffle band. First song is recorded, a cover of Holly's "That'll Be The Day". Joe Strummer (5) of The Clash is just starting school. Ozzy Osbourne is attending grammar school. Little could one foretell from this film of the cataclysmic changes that were to happen in the next ten to fifteen years. You certainly won't know it from this film.This film is set in the Midlands of England in a small, industrial town. It is a bit more like Green Acres than you would imagine of England of the 50s. People are very old fashioned and set in their ways. Thus, begins the journey of a young English couple (Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna), who inherit a "flea bag" movie theater. Their employees are a bunch of fossils from a bygone era. Peter Sellers, all of about 30 back then, plays a very credible septuagenarian. The older people are jealous and competitive of one another, yet have the worker's and community spirit to still stick up for one another.The young couple is naive. They don't realize they have their hands full running a movie theater. Locals of all ages flock to the theater, paying even with ducks and chickens from local farms. And they expect entertainment. What is entertainment? B-western films. And without the seemingly out of it projectionist (Sellers), the couple finds themselves amazed by how hard it is to run four or five projectors, and to keep an audience entertained.All in all, this is not is not Masterpiece Theater. Thankfully, this film exposes how pretentious so many films are today. This movie is about the salt-of-the earth English people of the 50s - naive as an American farmer, but without a pretentious bone about them. A time when life was rough, but people were pure.

A delightful and unpretentious comedy where all the players, and the director too, seem to be having a lot of fun.From the first reel (or whatever--I first saw it on VHS) there was something markedly different about this movie, I mean different from other British comedies of the era. It seemed somehow very American, I thought. No, that wasn't it at all (I pondered further), it's just that the young leads aren't draped with the usual over-stylization that afflicts most British comedies of the time. And this, to my American eyes, makes them seem normal, i.e., American. It was routine in British movies to make all the characters broad caricatures of one sort or another, so that within the first ten seconds of an individual's appearance you could slot him or her neatly according to class, age, and region. This convention gave us some wonderful character actors (Nigel Bruce, Dame May Witty, Wilfred Hyde-White, Stanley Holloway) and enabled some English directors to develop a quick and cozy rapport with the audience (think of how Hitchcock characters are instantly comprehensible if not always sympathetic). But it also means that leading parts without a funny persona are rare birds indeed. And a clown can may cry but he can never be deep.This movie might be understood as just such a critique of such film-making conventions. Two normal middle-class kids, without any class pretensions or funny accents, find themselves in a tumbledown cinema, surrounded by a repertory company of grotesques. Such monsters are funny in small doses, but if there are too many of them the business can't prosper or be profound. At best it will be merely an amusing shop of curiosities.