the audience applauded

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Grigori Aleksandrov co-directed some of the best films by Sergei Eisenstein, "Staroye i novoye", "Oktyabr" and "Que viva Mexico!". He was as much talented as Eisenstein, but with much more sense for genre movies, especially comedy. In his films he blended brave formal devices, a genre narration and a humor, and he did it with a great skill. "Tsirk" is an excellent example of Aleksandrov's style. The film is visually expressive, includes some typical modernistic devices, but with populist aim, some scenes are made in Busby Berkeley way, and so on. Also, "Tsirk" is a great propaganda movie and it tells the truth about American racism of those times, using this for glorification of Soviet Union as a tolerant and progressive society. (In fact, regarding racism, Soviet society of that time really was progressive in comparison with the United States.) Final scenes celebrates Lenin, Marx and Stalin in superb artistic way (a long double exposure is fascinating), and the film glorifies not only Soviet Union, but Soviet Russia, too. In fact, Soviet Russia is adored homeland in the film as a result of Stalin's Russian nationalism.

I haven't seen many propaganda films but among the ones I have seen, Tsirk was the most entertaining. Tsirk is a socialist propaganda movie commissioned by Stalin with an overall theme of equality and unity. Marion, played by Lyubov Orlova, is an American dancer on tour with a secret. Von Kneishitz her stage manager, who seems very German, knows her secret and threatens to expose her because he believes her secret is so scandalous that no one will accept her. In the end Marion's secret is exposed to the public but it turns out the public does not replace her, because they are soviet Russia and they accept everyone no matter what! It was interesting to see this movie and be able to compare it to the musicals that were being created at the same time in other parts of the world. I also found it interesting that they had to have a character in the movie that was evil and represented Germans. The very end of the movie was the best because the extreme amount of obvious propaganda. The movie as a whole was a propaganda film but the ending reminded me of watching the grand finale of a fireworks how they once gradually get faster and increase in number. The end of this movie was also like a grand finale for soviet propaganda. The song and the people involved with it gradually increased, got louder and a huge picture of Stalin was carried by the crowd. I'm glad I watched it for historical purposes but I would only recommend the film to someone who was interested in history or propaganda films.

If you are going to make a movie endorsing the actions of one of history's greatest villains, in this case Stalin, at least make it fun to watch! "Tsirk" is a funny, melodramatic, accessible movie that features several entertaining acts, such as the impromptu Lion Tamer, the dance on the cannon, and the communal ending. It is heartwarming to see an entire country represented as they sing a child to sleep, until you realize that the Yiddish Representatives were executed after the production. The running theme of confusion, over translation and ideologies, provided the movie with several humorous moments of error, and provided the movie with an honest subtext.Also, worth pointing out, is the movie's fearless attitude towards racism. Hollywood would hint at the problem, but rarely delve into it as much as "Tsirk" has.

Grigori Aleksandrov's film Circus is an entertaining piece of Stalinist/Socialist propaganda that differs greatly from Eisenstein's historical, earlier film October. October mainly serves the purpose of commemorating and remembering the Bolshevik Revolution and to help reinstate the strength and effectiveness of socialism to the people. Eisenstein's documentary style not only celebrates the revolution, but also aims to help the public better understand the historical process of the political revolution. On the contrary, Circus is a film that touts the greatness of life under Stalin and the superiority of the Soviet state. It contains all the elements of a Socialist Realism film. Through a pro-socialist narrative, Aleksandrov manages to cover many aspects of the Soviet state and current life of the people.Circus tells the story of an American named Marion who is banished from the US because a black man impregnates her. Marion escapes to Russia to start a new life in the circus and joins up with lustful, anti-Russian ringmaster who happens to be in love with her. The ringmaster knows her secret about the black baby and threatens to reveal it unless she marries him. The problem is that Marion has fallen in love with a Russian acrobat and later out of sheer jealousy, the ringmaster reveals the identity of the woman's child in front of the circus audience. Rather than ostracize the woman, the Soviet audience embraces the child and sings him to sleep. Next we see Marion and the acrobat as a couple leading a huge parade through Red Square singing about the freedoms that Soviet Russia provides. Circus displays the elements of ethnic equality, new and productive construction, and the glory of life under Stalin many times in the film. Ethnic equality is evidently portrayed during the acceptance of the black baby and his talented, but flawed American mother Marion. At the beginning of the film, Marion retreats to Russian as some sort of free land of acceptance, far more tolerable than her native America. The message is clear that socialism is a society of acceptance and capitalism (or the United States in this case) cannot tolerate diversity.When the non-Russian reveals the black baby, Marion finds great comfort in the fact that she is welcome among Soviets. The crowd proves this emotion when they embrace and protect the child from the ringleader while singing him a lullaby in several different languages. The lyrics of the song include lines that say the baby has a bright future awaiting him in Russia. Also, Marion's acrobatic lover says to her, "I always considered you to be a socialist." The message is that good people are all socialists. Concerning new construction and soviet productivity, there is a scene towards the end that shows the brand new underground subway system. It is obvious that the system is new and it is a symbol of the work and rewards of socialism. We see many people using the transportation system and a shot of the mammoth escalator leading to the subway points out the difficulty in building the system.Perhaps the most absurd and blatant form of propaganda comes and the end during the massive parade that is lead by Marion and her acrobatic lover. They are marching with a giant banner of Stalin and Marion is asked, "Do you understand? (the socialist system)" and she replies, "Now I do." I think it is amusing that it takes a huge march through Red Square singing about freedoms to the backdrop of their leader and claiming to be the "most democratic of democratic constitutions" to understand the Soviet system. Perhaps this was put in the film so the viewers would walk out of the film thinking they too "understand" the system.