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6.5/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.5/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Mighty Barnum remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have eighty minutes to spare and want to watch Wallace Beery sweat through a wool suit while screaming about giant men, The Mighty Barnum is a pretty wild ride. Circus history nerds will probably throw their shoes at the screen, but anyone who loves loud, chaotic early-sound comedies is going to have a blast. 🎪
It is basically a highly fictionalized biopic about P.T. Barnum before he became the "Greatest Show on Earth" guy. We start with him running a dusty museum in New York, trying to pass off a very tired-looking lady as George Washington's 160-year-old nurse.
Wallace Beery plays Barnum like a giant, lovable bull who just crashed into a china shop and decided to sell the broken plates as ancient relics. He is constantly shouting. Honestly, his face does so much heavy lifting here, wrinkling up like a wet paper bag whenever he gets a new "genius" idea.
Then you have Adolphe Menjou as his partner, Walsh. Menjou is basically playing a refined drunk who spends the whole movie looking like he smells something bad.
The contrast between them is hilarious. Menjou looks so tiny and neat next to Beery's massive, rumpled frame.
There is this one scene where they introduce "Joice Heth" and she just sits there looking incredibly bored while Barnum spins this ridiculous yarn. It is so obvious she is just some local actress they found down the street, and nobody in the crowd seems to care.
Then the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind (played by Virginia Bruce), shows up. The movie suddenly tries to be a serious musical drama for about ten minutes, and it completely kills the momentum.
Like, we went from bearded ladies and giant men to operatic singing? No thanks. I wanted more of the chaotic energy from the early scenes.
The fire scene at the museum is incredibly chaotic. People are just throwing buckets of water at nothing. It looks like the director just told seventy extras to run around and scream. It reminds me of the wild, unhinged energy in some late silent stuff, maybe a bit like Rain but with way more screaming.
Compared to other stuff from the era, like the melodrama in The Idol of the North, this is pure popcorn entertainment. It does not care about being artsy. It just wants you to laugh at Beery falling over things.
It is not a masterpiece, and the third act kind of drags when the circus actually gets successful. But man, that first half hour is gold.
A few random things I noticed:
If you want something polite and historical, go watch a documentary. But if you want to see a guy sell a fake mermaid made of papier-mâché, this is your film.
IMDb —
1920
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