Carola Lamberti - Eine vom Zirkus (1954)

The year is 1928. Carola Lamberti has run the Lamberti Circus alone for many years, ever since her husband’s death. Her troupe includes her three sons, Pero, Camillo, and Eduard, as well as her daughter-in-law Ines, Camillo’s wife. The sons perform a trapeze act as “The Three Lambertis,” one of the highlights of every show. The other is an equestrian act by the horse artist Viola. To Carola’s great displeasure, Viola starts relationships with many of the circus performers. When she gets involved with Carola’s son Pero, he abandons the horses during a circus move, putting them in mortal danger, and Carola has had enough. She fires Viola, and Pero, who feels that his mother is overbearing, leaves with her. The circus is now without its two main attractions, since the Three Lambertis cannot perform their trapeze act with only two of them. Carola, however, refuses to accept that a circus also needs renewal. At the opening show in a new town, she replaces Viola’s act with an acrobatic act by her daughter-in-law Ines, who has injured her ankle only shortly beforehand and falls during the performance. Carola herself steps in for her and presents an old-fashioned horse-training act, which makes the audience increasingly restless. Carola is booed, and only Pero—whose guilty conscience has brought him back to the circus—can save the evening with his brothers and their trapeze act. Carola realizes that she must leave the circus to her sons and withdraws to the circus’s winter quarters, away from the performances. The three sons now organize everything themselves, but increasingly become pawns in Viola’s hands, as she secretly maintains relationships with both Pero and Eduard Lamberti. Camillo Lamberti, meanwhile, is drawn unknowingly by his brothers into Viola’s plans: the two of them persuade him that the circus needs a more modern band. Viola also manages to ensure that the circus does not go to its winter quarters but instead embarks on its first foreign tour over the winter—Viola does not want to face Carola at the winter quarters. Ines rushes to her mother-in-law, who has meanwhile organized a circus show with a friend in Hamburg, and asks her to follow the brothers on their foreign tour, since neither has any experience with money or organization. Having learned from her past mistakes, Carola refuses. Her sons will come and get her if they really need her. For now, they would only feel that she was interfering again. On the tour, things finally reach the point where there is no feed left for the animals. Buying bread rations for them eats up the money they had painstakingly saved. Pero catches Eduard with Viola, and the two brothers get into a fight. Camillo and Ines fire Viola. On the evening of the performance, Eduard is so weakened by his fight with Pero that he falls from the trapeze and has to be carried unconscious out of the hall. The brothers now ask their mother Carola to return to the circus. She sets out from Hamburg and is finally welcomed back by everyone with open arms.