A struggling circus finds salvation in the form of an exciting new twist on their high-wire act.A struggling circus finds salvation in the form of an exciting new twist on their high-wire act.A struggling circus finds salvation in the form of an exciting new twist on their high-wire act.
William Hartnell
- Jim Powers
- (as Bill Hartnell)
Elsie Wagstaff
- Eve Wainwright
- (as Elsie Wagstaffe)
Patricia Laffan
- Nurse
- (uncredited)
Peter Noble
- Circus Worker
- (uncredited)
Jack Sharp
- Circus Worker
- (uncredited)
Cecil Ayres Trio
- Skaters
- (uncredited)
Victor Wood
- Journalist
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- Trivia"The Dark Tower" was a play by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott which ran for 57 performances on Broadway between November 1933 and January 1934. Warner Brothers bought the rights and made it as a vehicle for Edward G. Robinson later that year under the title "The Man with Two Faces". Nine years later Warner Brothers U.K. remade the film under the original title "The Dark Tower". The two films have very little resemblance to each other in their plots and backgrounds except for the heroine falling under the spell of a demonic fiend who controls her mind. The Hollywood version is faithful to the original with a Broadway actor trying to rescue his sister from her Svengali husband; the British version has an aerial artist in the power of a hypnotist against a circus background.
- GoofsWhile Tom and the other members of the troupe are packing; at one point the hidden overhead lighting used on the set begin to blink.
- Quotes
Willie Wainwright: Ladies and gentlemen, once more we bring to your town the thrill of a lifetime. The unparalled, the inimical, unrivalled Empire Circus. Come in your thousands and enjoy this feast of equine dexterity and acrobatic marvels we shall place before your astounded gaze. Never before in the history of this town has such a gay galaxy of talent and of beauty been set before you.
- ConnectionsRemake of The Man with Two Faces (1934)
Featured review
On the surface it's a circus movie -- but it's much darker than that.
A curious little movie that deserves to be better known. Based on "The Dark Tower," a play by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott, which was also the inspiration for the better-known "The Man With Two Faces," it shares little except for its title and the theme of hypnotism with the boilerplate melodrama by the two celebrated Algonquin Roundtable wits of the 1930s.
Well-acted,well-written, well-shot, and well-lit, this motion picture operates on two levels, both of them terrifying. Superficially, it's a neat horror film starring an excellent Herbert Lom as "Torg," a Peter Lorre-type -- a rather off-putting and unhappy gentleman from some Central European country who, while absolutely loathing people, can mesmerize them to do his bidding. Ingratiating himself into a rundown provincial traveling circus in a pre-war England -- think an anglicized "La Strada" -- he makes himself indispensable, turning around the fortunes of this one-lion show.
On another level, the circus can be interpreted as a metaphor for Nazi Germany, with the Lom character standing in for the master propagandist Dr. Josef Goebbels, sans a limp. Every utterance of his drives home this resemblance, as "Torg," morphs from just plain Torg to Mr. Torg to ... Doctor Torg, using his power "to cloud men's minds" to bully his way into a position of power. To draw attention to this subtext, the circus parade features a platoon of uniformed blondes marching with arms extended (are they Sieg Heiling?), and a Col. Blimpish ringmaster who could be a stand-in for Field Marshal von Hindenburg.
This secondary theme isn't all that obvious,and perhaps it may not even exist (as Sigmund Freud himself said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) but for one viewer it does lift this 1943 movie out of the realm of still another film of fright and frisson and instead, with its unspoken chilling and sinister message, places it in Hell.
Well-acted,well-written, well-shot, and well-lit, this motion picture operates on two levels, both of them terrifying. Superficially, it's a neat horror film starring an excellent Herbert Lom as "Torg," a Peter Lorre-type -- a rather off-putting and unhappy gentleman from some Central European country who, while absolutely loathing people, can mesmerize them to do his bidding. Ingratiating himself into a rundown provincial traveling circus in a pre-war England -- think an anglicized "La Strada" -- he makes himself indispensable, turning around the fortunes of this one-lion show.
On another level, the circus can be interpreted as a metaphor for Nazi Germany, with the Lom character standing in for the master propagandist Dr. Josef Goebbels, sans a limp. Every utterance of his drives home this resemblance, as "Torg," morphs from just plain Torg to Mr. Torg to ... Doctor Torg, using his power "to cloud men's minds" to bully his way into a position of power. To draw attention to this subtext, the circus parade features a platoon of uniformed blondes marching with arms extended (are they Sieg Heiling?), and a Col. Blimpish ringmaster who could be a stand-in for Field Marshal von Hindenburg.
This secondary theme isn't all that obvious,and perhaps it may not even exist (as Sigmund Freud himself said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) but for one viewer it does lift this 1943 movie out of the realm of still another film of fright and frisson and instead, with its unspoken chilling and sinister message, places it in Hell.
helpful•132
- lordreith
- Mar 13, 2012
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Dantonmysteriet
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 30 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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