That even the most talented and successful directors are, with varying frequency, obliged to accept subjects in which they can have little real interest is, it seems, part of the scheme of film-making almost everywhere; it happens, perhaps, most often in Hollywood—as most things do—and might as well be accepted….

Elia Kazan has been relatively lucky in this respect; his Hollywood assignments so far have nearly all been interesting, and his latest, Man on a Tightrope …, has, on the face of it, all the ingredients of a good, topical adventure story. A circus owner in present-day Czechoslovakia decides, when the communist authorities come to restrict his activities—the clown's act must be given political content—to escape into Germany. Because of its unexpectedness, the plan works, and the whole circus, elephants, Chinese jugglers and all, rolls its way over a frontier bridge into Germany.

An adventure...