Sergey Komarov is looking forward to tomorrow's performance of the circus. He's the leading clown in it, and the next performance will see him abandon his solo act for a double act with his son. But the circus is right by the front of the war between the White and Red forces in the Russian Civil War, and the boy has been caught with the local communist forces. He is scheduled to be shot. Can Komarov get the colonel to let him off?
Amidst shots of trapeze artists, many clowns, and a beautiful girl performing as teamster for a coach, Komarov transcends his silly clown makeup to offer us the performance of a man who loves his son even more than what he does for a living. If the heavy whiteface renders his expressions difficult to read, the montage more than makes up for that lack; Lev Kuleshov is one of the co-directors ( Nina Agadzhanova is the other), and he Kuleshov-effects the bejeezus out of it. This is Komrad Agadzhanova's only directorial credit; she did write the script for BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. This makes me wonder. Other directors had uses montage to invoke the players' emotions in a scene before Kuleshov noticed it and got it into print, thus immortalizing his name among film buffs. Is the steps sequence from Eisenstein's movie in Nina Agadzhanova's script?
