Towards a Genealogy of Circus Cinema by Brian Mcilroy

The Big Top on Screen: Towards a Genealogy of Circus Cinema By Brian McIlroy [delivered as a conference paper at the Film Studies Association of Canada annual conference at UBC on June 5th, 2019] Ever since the contemporary circus arose to significant public attention in the 1970s and 1980s, a form which cast away the use of animals in favour of the supremacy of the human body, general themes, theatricality, basic narrative, and modest character development, circus both recreational and professional has exploded in popularity. Circus themed films have waxed and waned in popularity over the history of cinema, but yet have been omnipresent. For example, the recent musical circus film The Greatest Showman (2017) was made on a budget of $84 million and scored $435 million at the box-office. In a strange way, study of the circus and its representations on screen tells us just as much about conformism as it does about iconoclasm. The freedom of the circus so engrained in the often-used phrase “ran away to the circus” proves to be more often than not a reckoning rather than an escape. And it is undeniable that the circus relies on an economy of exchange that fits within the capitalist system, even if living conditions as itinerant travelers give the illusion of freedom. Theorists such as Paul Bouissac have extolled the characteristics of circus performance as amenable to cybernetic and semiotic approaches in order to understand its cultural meaning, although circus within cinema I argue here goes beyond these formal theoretical structures to suggest that it is a reinsertion of spectacle and disruption within the contemporary cinematic universe, one that cannot be easily controlled. As an idea, the circus dovetails with Early Cinema remarkably well—the conventional non-animal circus today seems to run on ten or twelve acts of ten minutes duration. It’s as if we have returned to Melies’ early attractions, ones where only music or cirqu-ish (an intentional unknown gibberish language) are attached. The circus produces the fantasy of a dysfunctional though lovable family of freaks, malcontents and specialists. On the surface, it is a welcoming environment for those who do not have a role in mainstream society. But again, this is an illusion as circus has become more institutionalized and structured. Cirque du Soleil, which emerged from Quebec street performances, for example, with its arena shows, Las Vegas prominence, and expansion in Asia is now co- owned by American and Chinese corporations. In this research, I aim to explore how the cinema has made use of the circus, and illustrate how the cinema of attractions of early cinema fame has remained as a key component of these films. Circus films as theme or subject or context number in the hundreds world-wide. Most famously, we are familiar with Ewald Dupont’s Variety (1925), Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus (1928) Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932) Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), Fellini’s La Strada (1954), to name only a few. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari begins its narrative after a madhouse sequence, in a fairground sideshow. The circus film has one notable Oscar with Cecil B DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and appears central to more recent films as diverse as Wim Wenders’ trapeze artist in Wings of Desire (1988) and Errol Morris’s lion tamer in Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (1997). But the circus setting is also grist to the mill for innovative filmmakers-- Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003); Dave McKean's Mirrormask (2005); and even Christopher Nielsen's animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy (2006). This research thus tracks in broad strokes the evolving cultural role of circus in cinematic history. My preliminary thesis is that the conjoining of circus and cinema naturally produces mediocre films: that the realist/anti-realist debates find their voice in these films; that conventional narrative strips away at the essence of circus, and the disruption of circus acts, if taken seriously, undermine narrative connections. To give some structure to these random thoughts on the circus and cinema connection, I make some comments on History and Theory before looking at a few critical examples. History The history of circus is multifaceted. Greek and Roman festivals presumably incorporated acts of human acrobatics, contortion and juggling as a form of street theatre. Many historians point to the development of horse training in 18th century England as another aspect which led to the three-ring circus—in part to keep animals apart and under control but also to allow audiences to move around to witness different visual displays. A recent Netflix documentary American Circus details how showmen B.T. Barnum and Bailey combined the traditional circus shows with a Museum tent of sideshows and a Menagerie tent. By the late nineteenth century the travelling circus (by rail and road) was very much part of North American and Western European experience, though it began to be condensed to the large one ring circus for the most part, le grande chapiteau or Big Top. Acts of astonishment were and are the mainstays of circus acts but also technical mastery, whether in combination with humans or animals. To see elephants walk around in a clearly planned choreography was as common as clowns and aerialists in any definition of circus. Since the 1980s, the removal of animals from the circus as we experience through Cirque du soleil or the sept doight de la main companies in Quebec is now the norm, though animal circuses still exist in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. From a historical perspective, it was not uncommon to see overlaps of personnel in circus and variety acts and early film production. Of course, we know Charlie Chaplin’s early career straddles this fertile period. But one could include individuals such as Tod Browning, and lesser known lights like Robert Vignola who was a director and actor who worked with Canadian director Sidney Olcott, and who began in show business as a circus tightrope walker. Other historical curiosities and critical concerns involve the relationships between and among the circus and sideshows and carnivals. The latter two seem less well regarded, perhaps less skilled but surely belong to the overall circus/variety experience. Theory Helen Stoddart has in a number of publications drawn attention to specific theoretical approaches to the circus and culture generally, including cinema. One familiar approach is to cite the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer on the culture industry, and how they see the movie business as essentially destroying the radical and humanist nature of art, and by suggestion they privilege those arts which defy easy capture. In this sense, circus is a candidate for their approval. To film circus acts is certainly possible but largely immensely difficult. Technology here, such as with editing, can give the impression of a full performance of an aerialist, for example, but ultimately doesn’t achieve close to the experience of seeing a routine in real time. One can shoot a sequence in wide angle but such a static shot seems uncinematic. It goes a long way to explain why many films about the circus focus on the relationships between performers and not the acts they actually do. Naturally, there is the added complication that actors are needed mainly in mainstream narrative cinema and not performers who generally do not speak. Hollywood insurers are not likely to want to insure performers of the wheel of death (in fact most audiences seeing this act watch it in fear rather than enjoyment/amazement), and thus circus remains a disruptive activity. So, it’s no surprise that the connection between circus acts and early primitive cinema is so strong—acting is fundamentally through the body and not the vocal cords, and the disruptive nature of circus fits with Tom Gunning’s cinema of attractions’ concept in describing this 1895-1906 cinematic period. Yet, arguably, the cinematic version is tied to illusion via shock and surprise rather than circus acts focusing on amazement. Other theorists that have been borrowed for circus consideration include Bakhtin, for his writing on the carnival and grotesque realism which can place circus activity and some of its rendering on screen as a means to gesture toward a community ritual or pageant that lies outside modernity. And others have wondered aloud about the Foucauldian ramifications of circus—is the audience placed around the ring experiencing a kind of panopticon where we see the “mad” behave as if circus performers are a fascinating species of sub-humans or even aliens. Criticism Apart from Helen Stoddart, and a few journal articles, there aren’t any books of note on the relationship between circus and cinema. Enthusiast circus memorabilia collector Paul Adrian from France did publish a work in 1984 that illustrated a wide range of films that utilized the circus in France, the UK, and the USA. I think this lack of interest is explainable in part because of the essential contradiction between the two art forms: one is about a series of acts of astonishment that rarely go beyond ten minutes each, and the other is intent on up to two hours of narrative with the same band of characters. At the micro-level of analysis, one grasps this contradiction if you look at the cinematic choices when a trapeze act is performed in one of these films. For example, the British B film The Dark Tower (1943) has been referred to as a circus thriller or even a circus noir. A struggling circus takes on a hypnotist (played by Herbert Lom) who wickedly uses his skills to attempt to split up a trapeze couple and almost commits murder in the process.

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