MovieChat Forums > Lola Montès (1955) Discussion > Premise - Boy, that's one lame circus ac...

Premise - Boy, that's one lame circus act.


'Ask a courtesan your questions?'
Only in the movies is that a circus act.

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That is the point. America is all about hucksterism. Ustinov as the impressario, in a circus managed by the senior clown, is a professional faud meister. He knows that they will eat it up in America and fall all over themselves just to touch an infamous or renown celebrity. Celebrity snowballs as we go from the courts of the old world to the cheap but extremely sureal, manic, gaudy extravagance of an American circus. We ask ourselves in the end does pathos end in hilarity in America, and perhaps, from an old world perspective, the other way around. In the last scene in the move the rubes (who haven't a clue) are all crowded together in line waving their dollars in hand, while Lola who has entranced and cowed men of power and means stares in jaded stoicism having been reduced from audacity and intrigue in the grades of old world society from marginal to elegant to this pityous, ghastly, desperate spectacle. As Clemenceau once said; "America is, miraculously, the only nation ever to have gone from a state of barbarism directly into decadence without the usual interval of civilisation." Europe produces tragedy and satire (this movie is an example of the later, while America produced melodrama (in its first stage, e.g. Chuck Conners as "The Rifleman") and now soap opera (in its second, e.g. "Sex and the City" in which a gagle of middle aged women desport themselves as young sexpots).

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Considering the fact that there are much more empty entertainment on TV nowadays. I don't think it's that unbelieveble people would enjoy that.

Dancing with the stars.
What's the big deal on watching a bunch of non-professional dancers trying to dance? Just because they're "famous".
I think it's one of the biggest tv audiences in USA.

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You mean contemporary circus doesn`t feature a Q & A session with a naked whore locked in a cage?



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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Yeah haha I was thinking the same thing. He was shooting down most of the questions too. They werent even allowed to ask generic questions about her mother?

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