El circo fantasma

One of the more intelligent anti-Communist movies that came out in the Fifties was Man On A Tightrope, shot in Bavaria as close as 20th Century Fox could get to Czechoslovakia where the story takes place. Fredric March plays the lead, a circus owner who seemingly knuckles under to the new rulers of his country. For that his daughter Terry Moore is concerned with his mental health. His second wife Gloria Grahame thinks he's become a spineless weakling and starts casting her eyes about the rest of the show.

Not so because March has been ruminating about a plan to get over the border to West Germany and freedom and it's quite the scheme. But it will involve split second timing and the right opportunity which seems to have presented itself. He does have a traitor in his ranks who reports to the local party things in the performance that don't quite tow the party line. When local commissar Adolphe Menjou gives March an ideological pep talk about his clown routine, March realizes he'd better flee and fast.

This film was directed by Elia Kazan who has come down to us sadly as a friendly House Un-American Activities witness and was sadly booed at the Academy Awards when he got a lifetime achievement award. Kazan's long life ended in irony when Pat Buchanan spoke a eulogy on one of the talk shows. Then as now Buchanan was a guy Kazan would have despised, he always considered himself a man of the left.

But in his theater days he saw just how rigid and ideological Communists can be. I've long been convinced that each and every person who appeared at HUAC, friendly or hostile, each did it with his own motives and agenda, some good, some evil. Adolphe Menjou for instance was a rabid rightwinger who left a nice size bequest to the John Birch Society. His agenda was different certainly than Kazan's.

More than On The Waterfront which has come down in film history as Elia Kazan's apologia for being a stool pigeon, Man On A Tightrope is a far more personal work. March is playing Kazan as artist resenting any political intrusion of any kind in his work. Unless you realize that this film will have no meaning.

Kazan assembled a truly good cast and got some great performances, especially from Fredric March. Man On A Tightrope should be seen by today's audience for a real understanding of the era and of Elia Kazan.

Fredric March is a "Man on a Tightrope" in this 1953 film also starring Terry Moore, Gloria Grahame, Adolphe Menjou, Richard Boone and Cameron Mitchell, Directed by Elia Kazan, this black and white film is about circus performers who and a daring plan to escape to Germany from Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia. The manager of the circus, Karel Czernik (Fredric March) is a seemingly weak man - in fact, his second wife (Grahame) detests him for it. When he's called before Communist authorities for one or another infraction committed by the circus, he's deferential and nervous. Behind all this, he has been planning the escape of the entire circus from Czechoslovakia for three years. Only a few people know - but when the Commmunists ask about a radio owned by Czernik, he realizes one of his friends is probably a traitor, though he can't accept it. He also has trouble accepting his daughter's (Terry Moore) taste in men (Cameron Mitchell).

I visited Czechoslovakia eight years ago. The thought of that beautiful country and those charming, stunning people having to live for so long under Communist rule is a heartbreaking thought. This film really brought it home.

One thing immediately noticeable about "Man on a Tightrope" is the circus and the depressing Eastern Europe atmosphere, heightened by the black and white photography and the broken-down circus. Then there is the look of the people in the circus - these aren't actor's faces, these are the faces of real people. Kazan used a real-life circus, the Brumbach Circus, for background and performances. You can almost feel the dust and the oppression of working under Communist rule.

Fredric March gives a wonderful performance as Karel, a true actor who appears to bow to the Communists and yet is no weakling. His love for both his wife and daughter is apparent, as is his determination to get out of the country and concern for the performers. Gloria Grahame is sexy and flirty as his wife, who has her eye on the lion tamer, until she realizes the stuff her husband is made of. Moore and Mitchell are convincing lovers. Adolphe Menjou, as a Communist official, is very good as the only one who pierces the act that March is putting on. Smart men bear watching, and so do nice men. Cernik is both.

Apparently due to the political climate at the time, this film wasn't widely shown or publicized. I caught it on Fox Movie Channel - hopefully FMC will be on more basic cable in the country, and also hopefully Fox will bring this film out on DVD. It deserves to be seen.

Kazan, in his "A Life", describes this movie mostly in terms of early-morning bonding with his crew, but while it contains far fewer emotional lightning-bolts than most Kazan films, it also contains some incredibly poetic violence. Even though it's hard to tell if it's just hastily staged or artistically muted, one shot of a sentry being killed just below the screen is both intimate and shielding. The battle scenes are exciting, short, and brilliant. Kazan takes no credit at all, saying that much of the film was devised by producer Gerd Oswald and cinematographer Georg Kraus. Strange and sparse, this is a very interesting film.

This is a really fine movie, with some marvelous subtlety and powerful metaphor, despite the fact it shows its age. Great editing, good script, some superb scenes. I can't understand why it is not more widely known and appreciated. The Cold War is simply the setting; the unprepossessing story means far more.

For those who might be interested, this was the favorite movie of American poet Richard Hugo (1923-1982), who wrote several pages about it in his posthumously published 1986 autobiography, The Real West Marginal Way. A couple of Hugo's comments:

"The border becomes a kind of symbolic line separating the will from the imagination, the world of serious organizational adult responsibility from the paradise of childhood play."

"More than anything else, the music {of the amateurish circus musicians} attests to the poor odds facing not only the tacky circus but humanity itself."

This is an interesting movie about the members of a circus troupe trying to flee Communist domination while battling amongst themselves. Adolphe Menjou is spectacular as a down-on-his-luck government functionary. Gloria Grahame is chilling in her scenes. Richard Boone and Cameron Mitchell lend professional support.