The Smallest Show on Earth is a 1957 British film, directed by Basil Dearden , and starring Bill Travers , Virginia McKenna , Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford, Bernard Miles , Leslie Phillips, Francis De Wolff , George Cross, June Cunningham and Sid James.

The screenplay was written by William Rose and John Eldridge from an original story by William Rose. Travers and McKenna play a newly married couple (in real life they were husband and wife) who inherit an old decrepit cinema named the "Bijou," along with three old-timers who man the cinema. Rutherford plays the ticket-seller and bookkeeper, Sellers the projectionist, and Miles the doorkeeper and usher. The Smallest Show on Earth has a reputation as a generally well-regarded British comedy and this is because of the character performances of Rutherford, Sellers and Miles as the three old eccentrics; but of the three, only Rutherford (named Mrs. Fazackalee) was genuinely old and eccentric, whereas Sellers (who was 32 at the time) and Miles were heavily made up to be old, and their eccentricities such as they are seem manufactured. Rutherford, alone, is almost worth the price of admission.

The Smallest Show on Earth isn't a subtle comedy of manners in the tradition of Ealing comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955). Rather, it works more in the rowdy tradition of the St. Trinian's comedies (the names of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliatt, creators of the St. Trinian's series, are credited as presenters). For instance, it goes for broad comedy in its portrayal of movies as a modern form of entertainment. The Bijou seems to show only B-movie Westerns watched by young unruly crowds, but the movies are so patently caricatured that no one who truly loves cinema would want to watch them. Later, there is a scene of Mrs. Fazackalee playing the piano in accompaniment to a silent film. Only old Tom (the Miles character) and Sellers's Percy Quill, the projectionist, are watching with evident feeling and respect: the images of the silent film aren't caricatured like the sound films are. When asked by the uncomprehending owners (Travers and McKenna) what's going on, Quill explains, "Old movies... classics you might say...we used to run them like this in the old days but not for years we haven't done it. Now it seems like old times once more." The filmmakers are obviously paying a tribute to silent cinema but equally obviously they are doing so at the expense of sound movies, which are mercilessly panned and made fun of. As such, the film seems to knock itself, a kind of self-contempt. But the movie is ultimately a paean to old age, and accordingly, it ends with the Bijou's modern competitor, the Grand, burned down, and the old Bijou the only cinema left in town.