The Wrestler and the Clown

Director: Boris Barnet

1957 / 95min / 35mm

Fabulously shot in Sovcolor, this marvelous period melodrama whisks the viewer back to the turn-of-the-century Russian Empire as Ivan Maximovich (Stanislav Chekan), an unemployed carnival wrestler, arrives in Odessa and shortly thereafter meets the aspiring clown Durov (Aleksandr Mikhaylov) on his way to joining the local circus. The pair of artists become fast friends and comrades-in-art in the face of the exploitative abuses of the outfit’s tyrannical ringmaster—a clear Tsarist stand-in, but also perhaps, for Barnet, a cipher for the arbitrary authoritarian whims of Stalinism. “One doesn’t have to be stupid to dislike Barnet’s film,” wrote one Jean-Luc Godard, “but one does have to have a heart of stone.”

35mm print courtesy of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Introduction by programmer Edo Choi on Saturday, April 4th

This screening will be presented with live subtitles.

One screening only!

Part of Boris Barnet A Soviet Poet