Grigori Aleksandrov’s Tsirk – made in 1936, just as the Great Purge was underway – crescendos into a happy and inclusive portrait of Stalin’s USSR. It is a riot of one-liners, cutting remarks and allusions: from the parody of Chaplin (an explicit metaphor for the real Chaplin, a friend of Aleksandrov, a “humiliated genius” forced to compromise by Hollywood) to the German enemy who uses padding under his clothes to imitate impressive Soviet muscle. At the centre of all this are the songs. Like Shiroka strana moya rodnaya (Wide is My Motherland), the film is an instant classic. This Moscow music-hall comedy was abandoned by its authors – Ilf, Petrovand Kataev, who left the project due to creative differences – and ended up in the hands of Isaac Babel, who completed the rewrite (without credit). The result is a decidedly eccentric portrait of a nation committed to combating prejudice, racism and anti-Soviet propaganda. Despite its egalitarian message, which is unusual for the time, the film ultimately ends up exalting a certain kind of conservatism. Just consider the character of Marion Dixon (played by the star Lyubov Orlova), a circus artist corrupted by capitalism and American decadence: only in the Soviet utopia (with a true “cavalier” by her side) does she finally feel welcome and able to assume the role of mother. Despite its contradictions, Tsirkremains a visually startling film, in which Aleksandrov renders the lessons of Eisenstein even more popular, admirably playing with different registers, transitions and editing patterns. Beneath all the banners and stereotypes, he even manages to openly challenge the censor, including certain winks (including those of a sexual nature) to the audience, who rewarded him by packing out the cinemas. It is an excessively idealistic hymn to reconciliation, as the subsequent persecution and deaths of both Babel and actor Solomon Mikhoels would later demonstrate.

Alessandro Criscitiello