Jim（詹姆斯·迪恩 James Dean 饰）因为在学校里无法与其他同学共融，迫使他的父母只能多次搬家，这一次他们来到了洛杉矶。在洛杉矶的一所高中里，他仍旧遭到了同学的排斥，但认识了他心爱的女生Judy（娜塔利·伍德 Natalie Wood 饰）；交到了他真正的朋友 Plato（萨尔·米涅奥 Sal Mineo 饰）。在Jim和当地小混混头目、也是Judy的前男友Buzz一系列的纠纷中，两人最终决定以赛车来定胜负。而在比赛中，Buzz不幸坠入悬崖身亡。Buzz的兄弟们试图找Jim报仇，在两方的对抗中，Plato被警察意外枪杀，使这部影片留下了一个悲剧性的结尾。而Jim和Judy的命运又将何去何从？

本片的故事发生于美国西部的一个小镇，一个名叫威伊纳德女士在镇子外面设立了一个非常庞大的沙龙。她希望一旦铁路修通并从这个小镇穿过的话，她就能都把自己的沙龙改造成为一个自己的镇子。但是这个小镇上的人们只知道她怀有这样一种想法，非常想要她离开这里。有一天，有四个男人驾驶一辆四轮马车杀死了一个人。几个政府官员，在一个名叫埃玛·斯摩尔的头目的带领下，来到这个巨型沙龙，想要抓住那个杀人的人。这四个人正是威伊娜德的朋友。威伊娜德强烈地反对这些官员这样做，就在僵持不下的时候，威伊娜德的一个朋友，强尼·古塔尔出现了……

本片是文德斯应尼古拉司·雷的邀请与其一同拍摄的纪录片，雷是美国著名的文艺片导演，最出名的作品包括《无因的叛逆》、《万王之王》等。本片真实地纪录了他生命最后岁月里的一些琐事，包括他本来要计划拍摄的绝唱，是关于一个画家远赴中国寻求医治良方的构思，但遗憾的是在纪录片还未发行前因癌症去世。本片忠实地描述了他对于死亡将临的感受。

在第二次世界大战期间，两名从未见过战斗的英国军官布兰德和利斯被分配了一项至关重要的任务。布兰德的妻子几年前曾与利斯幽会，这使他们的关系和任务变得复杂。

一名与白人有些接触的爱斯基摩人来到商栈，在那里他意外的杀死了一名传教士，与此同时发现自己受到警察的追捕……
第13届戛纳电影节(1960)　 金棕榈奖(入围)　 Baccio Bandini

I remember seeing this film as a lad on a family outing in Manhattan, topped off by my insistence that we have dinner at Jack Dempsey's Restaurant in Manhattan. Too bad the old champ wasn't there that day or it would have been a perfect Sunday.
Seeing it now on a formatted VHS the awesomeness of the spectacle during the scenes of the circus fires and the capsized ship in the harbor is really lost. It's quite an eyeful and should only be scene in theaters.
And the film would be revived, but we have a subdued John Wayne here and it's not for the better.
This was originally to be a Frank Capra film and Capra bowed out after creative differences with the Duke and some of the Duke's personal entourage. Read the Capra autobiography to find out exactly what they were, but they weren't fully fixed in the final product by director Henry Hathaway who later piloted the Duke to his Oscar in True Grit.
John Wayne was a guy who was usually very careful to give the public the Duke they expected. Even when he stretched his abilities it was done with a firm directorial hand.
We're asked to accept the Duke as a man who had an adulterous affair here. He also does not throw one punch in this entire film or fire a weapon in other than it being part of his Wild West Show. The people went to see John Wayne, but they didn't get their money's worth.
Pity because it would have been great to see John Wayne with Rita Hayworth in a great film. That couldn't have happened when they were younger because of Rita's contract with Columbia pictures and Wayne's personal boycotting of that studio because of his dislike for Harry Cohn. That story I won't go into.
Rita Hayworth who doesn't enter into the film until almost halfway through is fine as Wayne's lost love. She and Claudia Cardinale looked just fine in tights as trapeze artists. Lloyd Nolan as Wayne's sidekick is always good.
Richard Conte is Hayworth's brother-in-law and Cardinale's uncle. This fine actor is wasted here in a part that either was badly written or left on the cutting room floor.
John Smith was a Wayne protégé of sorts, Wayne gave him an early break in The High and the Mighty which he produced. Smith went on to star in the Laramie TV series and on completion of that he was cast opposite Cardinale, probably at Wayne's insistence. I remember always wondering what happened to him because he left show business shortly afterwards. Then back in the Nineties I read he had died of cirrhosis of the liver. I guess you can fill in the blanks.
At the time Circus World came out, there was on television a prime time series called International Showtime. It was on Fridays at 8 pm. and it was set in a different city in Europe every week. Hosted by Don Ameche it featured the very best circus acts in the world. So did Circus World, but it certainly was no incentive for people to come out to see this when they could see the same thing at home. Also Paramount re-released Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth to a brisk box office business at the same time Circus World came out.
So for all these reasons Circus World flopped and bankrupted producer Samuel Bronstein. Nevertheless if you're a circus fan you will enjoy seeing this. But it's not the Duke his fans have come to expect.

Nicholas Ray ended his Hollywood career with his most expensive production, 55 Days in Peking (1963), and followed it ten years later with his least expensive, an experimental and politically radical independent feature made with his film students. Each movie is a shambles, though if I had to choose between them I'd probably opt for this one, which is certainly the more original. Ray and his students play themselves in docudrama situations that culminate in Ray's (fictional) suicide, and often he combines several images into crowded frescoes. The film reeks of countercultural alienation and anguish, and when it premiered at Cannes in 1973, Ray spoke of trying to make "what in our minds is a Guernica" out of such materials as "a broken-down Bolex" and "a Mitchell that costs $25 out of navy surplus." He tinkered with the film for years, and the 1976 date commonly assigned to it refers to a second unfinished version, which, lamentably, is unavailable. It's upsetting in many ways, but as a document of its time there's nothing remotely like it.
From 1971 to 1973, Ray taught filmmaking where he and his students produced We Can't Go Home Again, an autobiographical film employing multiple superimpositions. In the spring of 1972, Ray was asked to show some footage from the film at a conference. The audience was shocked to see footage of Ray and his students smoking marijuana together. An early version of the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973, but Ray, never satisfied with the project, continued editing it until his death in 1979. He secured teaching positions at the Lee Strasberg Institute and New York University with the help of old friends.