Trapeze | 1956
- DIRECTOR |
- Carol Reed
Between classics such as The Third Man and Oliver!, director Carol Reed made this colourful sawdust melodrama, with Lola (Gina Lollobrigida) coming between acrobats Mike Ribble (Burt Lancaster) and Tino Orsini (Tony Curtis). And it’s a great film for trivia buffs (‘In which film did Carry On... stalwart Sid James star alongside Burt Lancaster?’)
Much of the atmosphere comes from the location filming. Almost all of the movie was shot in, or around, the domed, 5,000 seat Cirque d'Hiver – now the Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione, 110 rue Amelot, in the 11th Arrondissement, Paris.
Built as the Cirque Napoleon by Louis Dejean, one of the most acclaimed circus managers of the 1850s, and opened in the presence of Napoleon III, it was here that the flying trapeze was invented by M. Leotard.
The parade along the Grand Boulevard and the Champs Elysées was filmed before a crowd of 9,000 Parisians.
