The Totalitarian Soviet Ideal and The Circus
In Grigori Aleksandrov’s (1936) Soviet film The Circus, an American white woman named Marion Dixon is chased out of the racist South after giving birth to a black baby. She escapes by train and is protected by a German, who becomes her manager, as she is a dancer. Their act takes them to the Soviet Union, where her act is incorporated into the circus there. She becomes beloved of the people for her performances and in turn falls in love with a Soviet engineer. This raises the ire of her manager, who tries to blackmail her to leave the Soviet Union. However, the Soviets are not put off by her son, who is of mixed ethnicity. The film indicates that Russians themselves are of mixed ethnicity and for that reason they are very accepting of the bi-racial child. The film ends with Marion’s “dark secret” being exposed at the circus by her manager and the Soviets in the audience happing embracing Marion and her black child, with different Soviets of different ethnicities themselves singing a lullaby to the child to show how loving and affectionate they are.
The film begins with a fast-paced tracking shot of Marion as she flees an angry mob of Americans who are chasing after her. She barely managers to board a train before it leaves, the mob hurling stones at her, which break the window of the train. Marion dives for cover into the room of the German man, who recognizes her photograph from the newspaper which has described the “scandal”—but he protects her and does not turn her over to the porter. The camera pans to the bundle in which is wrapped the baby, and though its color is not revealed then the audience is left wondering at this mysterious woman and what her secret is. Marion’s background is in the vaudeville, so with the help of the German, who acts as her manager, she joins the circus in the Soviet Union. There she meets the performance director Ivan and the two fall in love. Her German manager becomes jealous: he tries to convince her to leave Russia and threatens to expose her “dark secret,” but she responds favorably to Ivan’s request that she stay because...
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