70 Years Ago: “Man on a Tightrope”

This one goes out to friend Edward Einhorn, longtime champion of the work of Vaclav Havel, both through his own Havel Festival and now as the newly appointed artistic director of the Rehearsal for Truth Theatre Festival.

November 17 marks the date in 1989 when the Velvet Revolution was launched, the movement which quickly ended one-party rule by the Communists in Czechoslovakia and saw Havel’s elevation from internationally famous dissident playwright to President of the country. It also happens to be National Student’s Day, a Czech holiday commemorating student martyrs to the Nazis in a 1939 storming of the University of Prague. It seemed a fitting day to celebrate a lesser-known movie by Elia Kazan, which was released 70 years ago this year. And we’re also coincidentally at 20 years since Kazan’s passing.

Man on a Tightrope (1953) is a clear anomaly, the least well known film in the director’s most successful period, breaking up the hot streak that included A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), On the Waterfront (1954), East of Eden (1955), Baby Doll (1956) and A Face in the Crowd (1957). The latter is the Kazan film that appeals to me most as subject matter. It’s a cautionary tale about a demagogic folksinger that affected and influenced me deeply when I first saw it about 30 years ago, long before the Trump presidency transformed it into a document of prophesy. Inevitably I’ll write more about that one, in spite of the fact that everyone else already has, as I place it in a category with Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux and A King in New York as one of the great post-war satires.

As for Man on a Tightrope, I was never in any great hurry to see it. An anti-Communist statement made in the wake of Kazan’s controversial HUAC testimony, it seemed to me like it was probably some by-the-numbers act of contrition, designed to curry favor with American authorities and audiences by distancing himself as much as possible from their Cold War enemies. Its European setting, theme, and title disinterested me, and its marketing materials did it it no favors. The poster above was the most compelling one I could find. Most of the ones I encountered online depict either that same sort of intense-looking conversation but with NO clowns, or the film’s soapy-lookin’ subplot, viz.:

But I finally caught the film on Criterion’s streaming platform a few months back, and found myself unexpectedly moved to the extent that I wanted to make this effort to recommend it. Adapted by Robert E. Sherwood from a novel by Scottish writer Neil Paterson, Man a Tightrope is based on the real life escape of Circus Brumbach from East Germany to West Germany in 1950. We’ve had occasion to mention the Brumbachs before; strongwoman Katie Sandwina was one of that performing clan. Man on a Tightrope fictionalizes the incident, changing the country of origin to Czechoslovakia. Fredric March plays the head of a family-owned circus that has been nationalized by the state, and is forced to use his management gifts and knack for persuasion to stay out of trouble with party functionaries (led by the likes of Adolphe Menjou and John Dehner) who are none too pleased about his lack of compliance with their political directives.

Naturally the bureaucrats want more agit-prop, and they seek to promote performers more aligned with the party politically. March just wants to put on the best show, basing his decisions on the reactions of audiences. (Ironically, his way of running the show is more in line with The People’s wishes than the theoretically egalitarian socialist state, a fact I underlined in my book No Applause). But of course, injustice under totalitarianism is the point of the film. Behind the Iron Curtain The People are the prisoners of their government. March’s character isn’t particularly political, he just wants to run his show the way he sees fit. The fact that there are spies and informants in his own show fuels the tension so that he cooks up a scheme to get his entire circus over the border to freedom. Stirring up all sorts of trouble is his daughter (Terry Moore, who’d been nominated for an Oscar the previous year for Come Back, Little Sheba), her mysterious boyfriend (Cameron Mitchell, from Death of a Salesman), his sexy young wife (Gloria Grahame), and a sniveling turncoat (Richard Boone). And vaudeville vet Paul Hartman is in the cast.

March’s character feels a responsibility toward every person in his show and the weight of it hangs heavy on him. It sounds like a big drag, but both March and Kazan were at the peak of their powers at this juncture. March’s performance is incredibly full, depicting a man calculating and preoccupied but constantly needing to summon his optimism and powers of persuasion in order to save the people in his charge. It never occurs to you until the climactic scene what his scheme necessarily entails. Think how hard it was for an individual to make a break for it across the barbed wire in those days. Then image the job of getting an entire circus train across. I won’t spoil the ending for you too much, but will divulge that his character is partially successful and that he makes the ultimate sacrifice in the effort. He’s a Christ-like hero of course. And circuses being the microcosms they are are, the events also read like a metaphor for the fate of any nation that tried to leave the Warsaw Pact (as happened with Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). It feels particularly relevant in the light of Ukraine’s current struggle to be rid of Russian domination.

In recent weeks, we’ve been hearing noises from the American left that I find unpleasantly reminiscent of certain aspects of the Russia of a century ago. The idea that acts of terrorism in the service of a class struggle are legitimate. That rationale in the Soviet bloc had justified oppression and bloodshed on an ongoing basis internally once the Communists came to power. As I write this, the last couple of seen the mass madness of young people on TikTok approvingly quoting from a latter written by Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden! This an example of the Left becoming just as reckless and insane as the right, and should be just as terrifying to anyone with half a brain in their head. Naming names? Sure — not cool. Providing full employment and healthcare to a nation at the expense of oppressing every single citizen? Even less cool, I assure you.

But that’s only one reason I’ve chosen to spotlight this particular Kazan picture today. The other is of course…CIRCUS! A favorite topic of ours. The movie takes place in the middle of one, and there are lots of shots and scenes of the actual Circus Brumbach in action. Pretty meta! Just another one of the ways in which this movie transcends the borders of fiction into the realm of the all-too-real.

To find out more about the variety arts past and present, including circus,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.