GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Bereamic Awesome Movie

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

dkwootton Circus (1936) is a romantic-farce-musical directed by Grigorii Aleksandrov (1903-1983) who started as an assistant director to Sergei Eisenstein before graduating into the ranks of the great Soviet musical directors. Lyubov Orlova, the wife of Aleksandrov (and incidentally Stalin's favorite movie star), stars as Marion Dixon, a circus performer who flees to the Soviet Union only to be plagued by her troubled past of committing "history's biggest crime" of sleeping with a colored man and conceiving a colored child. Dixon falls in love with a theater director but is blackmailed by a Western man who has knowledge of her illustrious affair.While the arrival of sound brought a regression in the aesthetics of cinema, Circus manages to maintain the specificities of the medium offering spectacular visual sequences and technical perfection that makes the film seem rather Hitchockian. There are moments of Chaplinesque physical comedy (as well as a character physically resembling the Tramp (Chaplin's The Circus (1928) was made only six years earlier)) such as the man pulling the feather from the swan, using the feather as a pen, before putting it back into the swan. Aleksandrov stages the two protagonists falling in love in a spectacular shot as the camera pans down from Marion's face, to the couple holding hands in the reflection of the piano before rotating 180 degrees. Stalinist cinema, also known as socialist realism, abandoned the formalism that had categorized the Soviet films of the 1920s, to instead focus on wholesome entertainment and strong characters and plot intended for the masses. The films were similar to Hollywood narratives but located on the opposite ideological spectrum as they consisted of a naive, but good-natured hero developing the communist consciousness. Like, Chapaev (1934), Circus embodies the synthesis of ideology and entertainment that the Soviet center-moderate critics sought to achieve. At the climax of the film, Marion is exposed in front of the circus audience with the blackmailer claiming her actions justify her "banish(ment) from civilized society." The film portrays the socialist Soviet Union as a place of acceptance and understanding, compared to the harsh reality of race relations in the United States and other Western nations. The last minutes of Circus drive the message home as masses of people march through the streets carrying flags and banners of Lenin and Stalin as Marion turns to her comrade proclaiming, "now I understand."

blacklotus123 It's easy as an American to view this film as a piece of propaganda, but I'm sure there are films from the same time period that are just as heavy handed, in fact some of the films being released today are just as self righteous and absurd. One thing that I found interesting was how this film tackled the issue of white women having black children, this certainly was not happening in America at the time. The film has a unique sense of humor that may not hold up well today, but it does have its moments, The Russian Superman was my favorite. It is also a good movie to compare to American musicals of the time such as 42nd Street, except with a Russian twist.

kittinjc Circus, or Цирк (Tsirk) in Russian, is one of Grigori Aleksandrov's musical comedies of the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. As a work of state approved propaganda, the film seeks to glorify the socialist utopia of the USSR, where people of all races and classes are equal. While the film is set primarily at a circus in 1930s Moscow, however it opens in the United States, remaining there just long enough to demonstrate what the film will later show to be the extreme racial intolerance of the country.In the movie, American actress Marion Dixon (played by Lyubov Orlova) flees from an unknown scandal, shown in the film's typical over-the-top manner with an angry mob chasing her out of town. Eventually, Marion ends up performing at a circus in Moscow, staying there for a limited-time run with her stereotypically German manager. There, she falls in love with the dashing Ivan Petrovich Martynov, Red Army soldier, fellow performer, all-around perfect Soviet man. However, her controlling manager, language and ideological problems, and the aforementioned secret hang above her head, preventing that love from flourishing. After much goofiness, her secret is revealed to all: she fathered a child with an African-American man, a black baby. Much to the chagrin of her manager and even Marion herself, the noble Soviet people, as represented by the circus audience, love all children equally, and sing the child a lullaby in the many languages of the peoples of the Soviet Union. Finally learning what it means to be a citizen of the USSR, Marion and Martynov march together in the May Day parade through Red Square.All of this serves to emphasize the primary theme of the movie, the Soviet Union under Stalin is a utopian society where all are equal and accepted, regardless of race or nationality. This theme can be seen most in the characters. Marion, the American actress, comes to Moscow belittled and made to feel inferior by her own country and her German manager because of her child. She knows little of socialism or even the Russian language. As the film progresses however, she begins to learn both of the language, and the society it symbolizes. She strives for the love, and the perfection, of Martynov, and in so striving becomes an equal part of the collective, as shown by the parade ending the movie. The German manager however is devious, racist, threatening, and literally self-inflating, the foil to the perfection of the Soviet Union. This pro-Soviet anti-German characterization is powerful for the time, with the USSR preparing for the soon-to-come German invasion. Finally, the audience of the circus serves as the final major character, rejecting the racism of the German and showing the citizens of the Soviet Union to be both diverse and tolerant, unlike the citizens of Germany and even the United States.Overall, I found the film to be amusing, with above-average music and impressive set-pieces. However, despite its overtly positive demeanor and often effective comedic gags and music, there is something chilling lurking beneath the surface of Circus. In a film trumpeting the inclusiveness of the Stalin-era inclusiveness, the deletion of the final song sung in Yiddish and the execution of the man, Solomon Mikhoels, who sang it serves as a grim reminder of the almost insane hypocrisy of the film, and indeed the era of Soviet history as whole. The institutionalized racism and Anti-Semitism of the Soviet Union stands in direct contrast to the themes of the movie. Although it has little to do with the quality of production of the movie itself, I feel the weight of that fact hang like a chain from what would otherwise be a somewhat silly, buoyant piece of harmless comedic propaganda. However, the chain is well-deserved, and I could only recommend this film in good conscience with background information about the reality of race relations in the age of Stalin.

edwartell We rented this movie for my Russian grandmother; she's seen it, she says, 17 times. Scary. This is a saccharine romance in which an American actress, impregnated by a black man, escapes to Russia and starts a new life. She loves one man; the heavy, however, threatens that if she doesn't marry him, he will reveal her secret. This continues for a long time until the end, when he does so; indignantly, the masses at the circus rise and say that it doesn't matter what color the baby is, this is tolerant Russia! Then, for no reason whatsoever, the actress and her new lover are marching at the head of a huge parade singing about the freedom that Soviet Russia provides.This is one of those knock-off comedies that Aleksandrov made after returning from Hollywood. It even features a Chaplin impersonator. It's not that great, and anyone who masochistically feels they simply must learn about Soviet film in the 1930s would be advised to stick to Eisenstein and The Three Songs Of Lenin.