TONITE’S BEST BET: Snidely Whiplash – American Icon Цирк/The Circus (USSR. Моsfilm, 1936)(Doverie, 19:15) --> Wow! There’s so much going on in the back-story to G. Aleksandrov’s mid-‘30s “comedy musical” classic “The Circus” – not to mention in its front-story and then after-story – that adding 100 wds or so here is a fool’s errand…so I’ll just put on my clown hat, pick up the Daisy BB gun I keep by the Comfy Chair and take a shot at this moving target of a movie, which is now in its, oh, 5th [fifth!] redaction or something. OK, “Circus” is one of those “based on motifs from” adaptations – which really matters in this case, as the motifs (i.e. the original screenplay) came from the great Soviet satirists and America chroniclers I. Ilf & E. Petrov (along with the latter’s novelist brother V. Kataev)…who were so appalled by what G.A. did w/ their work – for reasons presumably both political and esthetic – that all 3 took their names off the project. What emerged onscreen, in any case, was the (very) curious story of an American circus troupe touring the USSR in the early ‘30s; while the film does indeed have some notable comical and musical ingredients (the latter including the immortal and relentlessly sung [and equally relentlessly parodied] Soviet classic Песня о Родине [Широка страна моя родная]) – its greatest impact for many viewers came as a statement on racism. See, the American troupe’s star (“Marion Dixon” -- > Liubov Orlova, the “Russian Marilyn Monroe” – and probably GA’s wife at the time) has given birth out of wedlock, it transpires, to a black child (“little Negro [негритёнок] Dzhimmi” -- > James Patterson), and is being blackmailed over this by the companys evil American impresario (“Snidely Whiplash” – wait, “Franz von Kneishitz” -- > Pavel Massalsky). He is foiled in this endeavor by vigilant Soviet citizens b/c, well, there was no racism in the USSR – let’s not start, OK? – and thus everybody lives happily ever after in the World’s First Socialist State (SPOILER ALERT: except Snidely von Kneishitz). Now, in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘80s the film was (further) messed with – meaning ideologically adjusted, credits changed, technically restored, colorized/decolorized and even its dialogue revoiced [!] – and it’s always a crap-shoot as to which redaction you’re going to see on TV. (Kultura has run a “Stalinist” version that showed up on Russian TV in the early ‘90s under the rubric ‘Kinopravda?’” – which I would call, though not exactly happily, the most “authentic.”) In any case, you need to see (some version of) this film: its entertainment value is perhaps uniquely three-tiered – as a remarkable “Soviet Hollywood” variety production (guess where G.A. spent two yrs in the early 30s; correct); as an index of what Soviet audiences of the high-Stalin period – whose appreciation of “Circus” was not feigned, after all – wanted to see when they went to the movies; and as a classic piece of Soviet (internal) propaganda, faithfully plugging as it does a commendable anti-racist ideal, however clumsily…and using Americans, who certainly deserved the poop end of the stick on race relations, as both villain *and* heroine. Somewhere in his Notebooks (Zapisnye knizhki, which are fascinating) Ilf aims some scathing lines at G.A. for what he did with/to I & P/VK’s original screenplay (titled “Под куполом цирка”/“Under the Big Top”) – and while I understand and sympathize w/ that – and really, REALLY regret the fact that Big Top was never filmed – the fact remains that Aleksandrov *did* produce a film that is, any way you slice it, both quite (if sometimes eerily) watchable today as well as unarguably historically noteworthy. So tune in (or watch online below) – and find out whether Snidely gets Gulag-ed or what. Hey, Im not telling *everything*.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 05:53:54 +0000
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