Communism In Film

Introduction: Following the release of his immensely popular 1934 film Jolly Fellows, director Grigori Aleksandrov found himself in an unenviable dilemma. While his films were quite successful with the Soviet people, the state itself was less than impressed with the lack of ideological content. And, given how they had full control over the making of future films, Aleksandrov realized that his career was potentially at risk, especially given the strict standards the censorship board followed in the Stalinist era. Consequently, Aleksandrov attempted to make his next film much more faithful to the party’s ideology. As a result, Aleksandrov’s 1936 film Circus would be his attempt to prove to the state that he was indeed able to make an ideologivally correct. Given the film’s depiction of the sole German character, the Soviet circus production’s superiority over their competitors, its promotion of racial equality, and its depiction of national unity,
Yet, historically, there was a great deal of racism within Russia, and later the Soviet Union. While it may not have been as publicly acceptable as in the United States, many Soviet citizens viewed people of different ethnicities as “different” from them, and therefore lesser. This raised a major problem for the Bolshevik party, due to how a state based on the idea of the equality of the masses, and yet millions of people were treated poorly simply due to their race. Thus, the intention of the film is to show the people of the Soviet Union that even though they may live all over the country, and have various skin tones and cultures, they were all Soviets. In turn, this promotion of racial equality also paints the Soviet Union as superior to their American counterparts, as the American Marion Dixon is able to find acceptance for her and her child not in America, but in her new adopted