Monthly Archives: March 2012

Circus (1936)

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I wrote the following for an undergraduate assignment for a Soviet Film course

Director: Grigori Aleksandrov

May Day Parade towards the end of the film

In Circus, the main character Marion Dixon slowly comes to accept the Stalinist ideology and sees that the Soviet Union is an accepting, inclusive nation.  Through out the film, Dixon’s “protector and tormentor us the German ringmaster Franz von Kneischutz” (Stites, 89) who continually keeps Dixon in a subordinate position by threatening to expose the fact that she has a black child. This is a threat for Dixon as when it was exposed that she had a black child, it lead to “scandal” in the United States which is why she left the US and went to work in the USSR. With this threat always in the back of Dixon’s mind, she meets and enters in a romantic relationship with Ivan Petrovich Martynov, who is in a sense the embodiment of the “perfect Stalinist character”.

Martynov, a caring decent character, throughout the film attempts to help Dixon “understand” the USSR and what it stands for, which is in a sense is the representation of the role of Stalin as the extreme “Vanguard” of the continuation and protection of the revolution. He is a joyful person that represents the “laughter” of Stalinist culture: life is to be enjoyed and we should “laugh more”.  Although he does not necessarily go around laughing at everything, his attitude towards the situations he finds himself in are certainly in line with this Stalinist idea.

One of the most important scenes in the film before the end is the scene where Martynov and Dixon are in the apartment and both sing the song “Song of the Motherland.” This song is a good example of how Stalinist ideology is being portrayed in this film and as Stites says on page 90 “the lyrics… embodied some of the major myths about the early Stalin era.” The song talks about how beautiful the USSR is and how there is no other country that is as free as the USSR. This scene is an example of the conversion process for Dixon, as by singing this song she realizes the Stalinist Soviet Union is a joyful place that is the most free and tolerant in the world, although she still has the threat of her black child being “exposed” by von Kneischutz, so at this point she has not fully accepted it but has taken a large step in the “right direction.”

Von Kneischutz becomes jealous by this move of Dixon, and it’s portrayed as a personal jealousy which is analogous of an ideological jealousy. His character represents fascist Germany which was ideologically the very opposite of Stalinist USSR by being very intolerant, which is represented in von Kneischutz’s desire to keep Dixon blackmailed through the threat of exposing her black child. This conflict comes to its climax at the end where von Kneischutz actually does expose Dixon’s black child to the crowd at the circus. He expects the crowd to reject Dixon and see her having a black child as something to be embarrassed and ashamed about, when to von Kneischutz’s surprise: the crowd does not see it as a problem. When von Kneischutz is shocked to discover the crowd is accepting of the child, someone even approaches him and says (to paraphrase) “what are we supposed to do, cry?”  This is in line with the “joyfulness” of Stalinist ideology. Citizens were expected to laugh during the Stalin era, and this situation is a perfect example of them approaching a situation with laughter.  The crowd then breaks into a lullaby sung by the different national languages that make up the USSR to demonstrate further the tolerance of Stalinist USSR.

The film ends with the May Day parade where Dixon is marching along with the masses and finally expresses that she understands Stalinist USSR.

The book references above are for Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 by Richard Stites

The Red Detachment of Women (1970)

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Directors: Pan Wenzhan, Fu Jie

The Women's Detachment

The Red Detachment of Women is a film adaptation (or rather filmed version of) of a Chinese ballet from the mid 1960s. It was produced during the Cultural Revolution in China, which itself made quite an impact on the Western Left (and particularly in the French Left).

The film (and ballet) follows a poor peasant named Wu Qinghua who goes from being imprisoned by her landlord for being in debt through her escape and journey to become part of the Red Army. Throughout the film, she receives training from the Red Army as they prepare to assault the landlord class’ stronghold.

The scenes that depict the Red Army are usually filled with upbeat music and show a joyful cadre willing to fight for the cause. This is reminiscent of classic “Stalinist” films such as Circus (1936) where “joy” is part of every day life and how that every day life relates to the state. In the case of Detachment, these scenes are contrasted with the elite, who are depicted as a classic “bad guys.” An interesting example to highlight how the Red Army is portrayed, when Wu Qinghua enters the camp and falls down, the entire army physically moves down to prevent her from falling; while this is perhaps an exaggeration in analysis due to this being a ballet performance it still shows how the “ideology” is supposed to come through. Criticisms of “binary contrasts” and oversimplification aside, this makes for a plot device that highlights class struggle, and more importantly: the role of women in that struggle.

Red Army helping Wu Qinghua

Throughout the film, women are portrayed as a fighting force, from their training to actual combat (where they take leadership roles as well). This is contrasted with the landlord from the beginning of the film who imprisoned women who owed him debt, and the “tyrant’s” lair, where women were subjected to male rule. While this is all through the lens of the Red Army (and thus the Party) as a whole, it demonstrates the interconnectedness of the two struggles, or at least an attempt to connect the two struggles in this context.

Although the film did have this positive portrayal of women as agents of change, the “hero” of the film who was made a martyr towards the end is a male character. While this makes the film a bit more complicated in terms of portrayal of gender, the film itself still stands as an example of linking the struggle against property and the struggle for women’s liberation (which at the time of this film was an ongoing struggle).

At the time of this writing, the film can be seen in its entirety on “The Internet Archive”

There are also various clips of the film on YouTube