Circus Angel (1965)

Not rated.  While the tone is definitely aimed at children, there's some pretty questionable morality in here.  The protagonist is a jerk who uses the ability of flight to trick people into giving him things, some things that may be considered sexually manipulative.  The movie also shows a suicide attempt.

DIRECTOR: Albert Lamorisse
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Two!  Two full length movies in what I thought was a collection of shorts.  I don't know how much I'm going to write about this, but it will be enough for this to have its own entry.  I would like to apologize for that abomination of a photo that I just posted.  It's difficult to find a picture from this movie that is high enough resolution.

Circus Angel somehow is great and terrible at the same time.  It doesn't really shock me that this might be one of the lesser known Albert Lamorisse movies simply because it is a bit of a mess.  The funny thing is that this might be the most traditional narrative out of all of Lamorisse's movies.  He's going for making an outright comedy here and, for the most part, succeeds.  It is actually more funny than it is a good movie.  I think my frustration really comes from the fact that the protagonist doesn't necessarily follow the tropes that we are expecting with a movie like this.  I know.  I should be all excited for a movie to defy convention, but in this case...it almost feels like a sin to sell this movie.

Fifi (and I'm just discovering that this is the character's name) is a jerk from moment one.  He's one of those lovable thieves. He steals watches and lives one of those lifestyles that could only be described as trampish.  Considering that Lamorisse is a big fan of "the easiest way is the best way", Fifi finds himself in the middle of a lion tamer's act.  Now, this is where Lamorisse steps into the world of convention.  While Fifi is objectively wrong, Billy Madison style, he's up against an unlikable bully vying for the attention of a beautiful girl.  We automatically hate the lion tamer, although from his perspective is probably doing the morally correct thing throughout this film.  

When he is given the gift (and curse!) of flight, I simply assumed that he was going to start becoming a better person.  The movie ends that way because we needed to have some kind of happy ending.  But it really does become a light switch that doesn't make a lot of sense.  I thought that the love of a woman would be the driving force to turn Fifi (pun intended) to the world of angels.  He goes from being the Birdman into something more angelic.  And while Lamorisse is somewhat teasing the concept of faith in this movie, it really does take a long time for Fifi to pick up that these people are genuinely in need of an angel.  

Maybe it's because he goes from being a lovable bad guy to a completely selfish monster.  When he falls in love, it seems like he has turned over a new leaf.  He highlights the toxic masculinity of the lion tamer / strongman and it seems like he has finally found a reason to think beyond his own selfishness.  He does work really hard to make his girl love him.  Yes, he uses immoral means to impress her by stealing a clock while the strongman, presumably, does the same act in a traditionally moral stance.  Lamorisse plays it really weird with the sequence of events that follows.  He saves a man from hanging himself (and it's a dark joke which I have to excuse to simply being the product of yesteryear).  It seems like Fifi has no reason to help this man beyond the fact that he has empathy for a man who is willing to end it all for the love of a woman.  Maybe there's a sense of brotherhood of losers with this man.  But it seems like Fifi is going to help his suicidal acquantance only to try to seduce his fiancee?  He then decides to rob the family blind all for the sheer chaos of it.

This is where Lamorisse loses me.  What these scenes are to the movie is comedy.  It's just joke telling as a flying man dressed as an angel annoys bullies, runs away from law enforcement, and does naughty things.  But it's also fundamentally against what the message of the movie was up to this point.  When Fifi goes to the circus, as much as he finds it to be a burden, he does start developing a sense of purpose.  His relationship with the acrobat seems like this whole narrative about the redemptive love of another.  But the second he gets the chance, not only does he return to a life of crime, but he escalates it.  This all climaxes when he intentionally eats of all of a starving man's food.  There's nothing all that likable about Fifi by the end of the film.  While Fifi is rescued by a family who have faith that he is an angel, this hardly seems like the transformative moment that the movie wants it to be.  If anything, it just seems like a beat.  I can almost read the chart saying, "Start closing up the movie."

Thank God the movie just takes a hard turn and makes Fifi a good man at the end.  It doesn't really make sense.  But for all of the moral shannanigans that the film throws in, all of the plot threads seem to tie together to offer solace for the crimes that this man has committed throughout the film.  It's a bit odd that the strongman is taken to prison, considering that he just sucks but is not evil. 

It's a cute movie that succeeds despite the crimes of the film.  It's not a great film.  Again, it's for the reasons that I stated above.  He's just that much of a jerk that it is hard to root for such a guy throughout the movie.  But did I enjoy it?  Yeah.  It's a funny movie that very much has that Lamorisse charm throughout the movie.  It's nice to see a movie that has a straight up story coming out of Lamorisse as well.  But I'm going to take this more of a loss than a win.