Circus, a Socialist Realist musical comedy, was a very good movie. I really liked watching it a lot, it kept me entertained very well. One of the aspects of the movie that was really interesting to me was just the comedic style of the actors and actresses. Their style was much different from the comedy in Irony of Fate. It was much more of a goofy comedy, just like in the real circus, when they do stupid things to try to make you laugh. Except in this movie this type of comedy continued off of the stage and you could see the goofiness in their real lives.
There seem to be several defining traits of the Socialist Realist films that we have watched. One of the more prominent traits is that they both separate the good from the bad, and they make it so that you can tell which side they are on. Another thing that stems out from this is that the good side shows characteristics of honesty, appear more peasant like, and also they are shown to approve of all people and consider them equals. This is a major part of the socialist idea, to make everyone equal and seen as equal in the eyes of all. Circus shows this idea several times but especially at the end. When Mary's secret is revealed that she has a black baby, Von Kneishitz(the bad side), who revealed the secret, is acting like it is a terrible thing and it is unacceptable. However, the entire rest of the crowd and the other characters are kind of like "So what?". It shows that they don't care what the color of the skin of the child is or anyones skin color, they are all accepted and equal to one another.
Even though I can tell that the director's or the artist's are restricted by Socialist Realism, I still think there is alot of room for them to give their own creative expression. They can make the movie in any form that they really like, such as comedy, romance, and war. Just because they have to portray certain messages, I don't think that it is ultimately restricting, they can also use their own creativity to portray these movies.
I would place this right in the middle of the triangle because I feel like it really covered all forms of film. I think that it was very artistic because of the whole circus thing. We know that it was a propaganda film because it was created during this time of Socialist Realism. Also, it was very entertaining. It was an excellent film.
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Now that I think about it, I definitely agree that their circus-like behavior often does seem to continue outside of the ring. In fact, it would almost be tempting to liken (what with the subplots and all) the movie as a whole to a sort of three-ring circus!
ReplyDeleteI would simply expand your description of the "good side" in Socialist Realism to go beyond merely being peasant-like and to also include such manifestations as worker-like--simply because there isn't much of the countryside in this particularl movie, really.