Trapeze, 1956
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Paris: Flights: Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport
Cirque d'Hiver, 110 rue Amelot, in the 11th Arrondissement (Metro: Filles du Calvaire, Line 8; or Oberkampf, Lines 5 and 9)
Trivia
For more of Paris, see Belle de Jour, Ronin or Amelie.
For more Carol Reed, there’s The Third Man in Vienna, or The Fallen Idol in London.
Trapeze location: Cirque d'Hiver, rue Amelot, Paris
Between classics such as The Third Man and Oliver!, director Carol Reed made this colourful sawdust melodrama, with Lola (Gina Lollobrigida) coming between acrobats Mike Ribble (Burt Lancaster) and Tino Orsini (Tony Curtis). And it’s a great film for trivia buffs (‘In which film did Carry On... stalwart Sid James star alongside Burt Lancaster?’)
Much of the atmosphere comes from the location filming. Almost all of the movie was shot in, or around, the domed, 5,000 seat Cirque d'Hiver, 110 rue Amelot, in the 11th Arrondissement, Paris.
Built as the Cirque Napoleon by Louis Dejean, one of the most acclaimed circus managers of the 1850s, and opened in the presence of Napoleon III, it was here that the flying trapeze was invented by M. Leotard.
The parade along the Grand Boulevard and the Champs Elysées was filmed before a crowd of 9,000 Parisians.
