Russian Film The Circus Showcases Red Hollywood

1936 Soviet-era Musical Mixes Comedy, Love & Race Politics

Oct 12, 2009 Susan Z. Swan

A lavish Busby Berkeley-style musical, a critique of race intolerance, and Stalin's favorite actress add up to a movie that was wildly popular in the 1930s USSR.

The Circus (Tsirk) (1936) is a thoroughly delightful musical, one of a number that combines the talents of director Grigori Alexandrov and singing, dancing sensation Lyubov Orlova. Based on the hit Moscow Musical Hall comedy, Under the Big Top (Pod kupolom tsirka), by Ilya Ilf and Yevgeni Petrov, the movie found its balance on the fine line of popular entertainment, social commentary, and state-required propoganda.

Alexandrov was a Russian film director closely associated with film master, Sergei Eisenstein, while Lyubov Orlova was the “shining star”of Mosfilm Studios for decades. They met in filming the Jolly Fellows (Vesyolye rebyata) (1934) and were married, remaining together for forty years. Alexandrov’s final film was a posthumous documentary of Orlova’s career.

Stalin’s Love of Musicals Opens Door for Alexandrov

Encourage by Stalin, who had a fondness for musicals and an obsession for Orlova, Boris Shumiatski, as head of Soviet cinema, issued a decree in 1935 that filmmakers should make “movies for the millions” (Iordanova, Senses of Cinema, 2002). The goal was to build a Soviet popular culture to carry forth the Worker-grounded ideology of the state. And a movie for the millions The Circus was! It was released on 25 May 1936 and, according to Masha Belodubrovskaya, opened to a crowd of 20,000 in Moscow’s Gorky Park and sold more than a million tickets during its first two weeks.

Plot Transformed Comic Play into a Study of Race Politics

The film opens on an American circus performer, Marion Dixon (Orlova), fleeing a lynch mob after they discovery her infant is of mixed race. Desperate to find safety, Dixon immigrates to Europe, falling into the clutches of an evil German manager, Von Kneishitz (N. Massalsky). Von Kneishitz (representing the racism of Nazi Germany) lurks around in fine Bela Lugosi-Dracula form, swirling his high-collared cape and even disappearing into thin air after one particularly nasty deed.

Once in Moscow, Marion is the darling of the circus. Singing, dancing, and being shot from a cannon onto a trapeze bar are all in an evening’s entertainment. When Marion meets the tall, blond and dimpled Petrovich, a poster-boy of Russian perfection, romance sparkles. Their developing love is a counterpoint to that of the Ring Master’s daughter, Raye (Yevgeniya Melnikova) for Skamejkin (Aleksandr Komissarov), a stage designer. The complications that confound these lovers weave a lighter comedy of manners into the darker storyline, driven by the machinations of von Kneishitz who is determined to possess Marion.

Circus Offers a Touching Tale of Racial Tolerance

Finally in a jealous rage, von Kneishitz exposes Marion and her child to the crowd at the circus. Rather than the lynching he expected and that Marion feared, the crowd embraces the little boy (Jim Patterson, son of a couple who really did leave the US for the USSR seeking a racially safe haven). The lullaby sequence which follows the discovery of the child is a marvel. While it may not reflect the reality of the Soviet state, it is a scene that steps outside of time and place to offer a universal lesson.

The little boy is passed through the crowd from person to person as they shield him from the furious von Kneishitz. When he gives up, the people turn to comforting the toddler, passing him from lap to lap back down toward Marion and Petrovich. Beaming with love and acceptance, they cradle him, each holding him long enough to sing a snatch of a lullaby as though he were their own. Each mother or father or couple that cuddles the boy is different ethnically, expressing visually and musically a dream of inter-racial harmony.*

When Marion asks the Ring Master (Vladimir Volodin) to explain, he declares: “In our country, we absolutely love children. You may have a child of any color here: black, white, red, or even striped like a zebra or polka-dotted. Whatever’s your pleasure!” This summarizes well what Kam Williams of NewsBlaze describes as a “touching tale of tolerance that doesn’t deserve to be dismissed as propaganda” (April 29, 2009).

Stalinist Propaganda Returns in the Epilogue

The magical moment fades. The story steps back into space and time in the Soviet Union, and Stalin and the KGB must be appeased. The final scene is a public rally with the key players, all in purest white, singing a song of patriotism and propaganda. Marion takes her place amongst her new comrades amidst banners waving and crowed marching, unified in common cause.

The scene was surely not intended to be one of the comic moments of the film (lest laughter lead one before a firing squad), although for a recent 2009 audience that was exactly the reaction. One wonders how much this was due to the abrupt shift of scene and how much was a nervousness given the eerie similarity of the scene to more recent and closer-to-home patriotic rallies.

The Circus (Tsirk) (1936)
Starring Lyubov Orlova, Yevgeniya Melnikova, Vladimir Volodin, Sergei Stolyarov
Play written by Ilya Ilf & Yevgeni Petrov; adapted by Grigori Alexandrov
Directed by Grigori Alexandrov
Running time: 94 minutes
Format: 35 mm, B/W, Russian with English subtitles

To learn more, see these related articles:

(1) The Art of Grigori Alexandrov in The Circus and

(2) The Making of the "Red Hollywood" Film Series: An International Tale of How Lost Soviet Musicals Came to America

Notes

Masha Belodubrovskaya, Program notes for "Red Hollywood: The Musicals of Grigori Alexandrov and Lubov Orlova," 10 October 2009, University of Wisconsin-Madison Cinèmathéque.

*Soon after the release of the film, when Stalin was making nice with Hitler, one mother singing in Yiddish was cut from the movie in an ironic undercutting of the film’s message, but this—the sweetest of the lullabies—was not lost and was restored to the film in the 90s.

The copyright of the article Russian Film The Circus Showcases Red Hollywood in Foreign Films is owned by Susan Z. Swan. Permission to republish Russian Film The Circus Showcases Red Hollywood in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Still, The Circus (1936), dir. Alexandrov