The Smallest Show on Earth (US: Big Time Operators) is a 1957 British comedy film, directed by Basil Dearden, and starring Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna, Peter Sellers, Margaret Rutherford and Bernard Miles.

Robin informs them that the Grand's owner, Mr. Hardcastle, had offered to buy the Bijou from Matt's great uncle for £5000 in order to construct a car park for his nearby cinema.

[5] In contemporary reviews The New York Times called it "a little package of nonsense [...] populated by wonderfully wacky characters [...] Margaret Rutherford's cashier, Peter Sellers' projectionist and Bernard Miles' doorman are gems".

[7] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The whole weight of this gay idea (which owes something, perhaps, to Genevieve [1953]) is carried by Bernard Miles, Margaret Rutherford and Peter Sellers.

Peter Sellers' little dance of joy and his drunken subsidence in the projection booth, Margaret Rutherford's mastery of the Bijou's accounting system and her devotion to the late proprietor, Bernard Miles's startling displays of idiot shyness, are all in an excellent and robust tradition; and it is remarkable that such different and eccentric performers should have formed a team so homogeneous.

"[8] The Radio Times wrote, "In praise of fleapits everywhere, this charming comedy will bring back happy memories for anyone who pines for the days when going to the pictures meant something more than being conveyor-belted in and out of a soulless multiplex [...] The cast alone makes the movie a must-see, and the sequence in which projectionist Peter Sellers, pianist Margaret Rutherford and doorman Bernard Miles relive the glories of the silent era is adorable.

"[9] Leslie Halliwell reviewed the film as: "Amiable caricature comedy with plenty of obvious jokes and a sentimental attachment to old cinemas but absolutely no conviction, little plot, and a very muddied sense of the line between farce and reality.