In these days in which the Obama administration is flexing its big government muscles in the service of secular fundamentalism, it is as well to remember where such a line of reasoning often leads. With this in mind, I’m posting a thought-provoking e-mail from Kirk Kramer:

 

The Berlin Wall? the Katyn Forest? the Ukrainian famine? the Gulag?

Pol Pot? Solidarity? what’s all that?

 

More than 22 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, I’m afraid that’s the reaction of many people today when they hear about Communism. They have no conception of the misery and tyranny men lived under in large parts of the world for much of the 20th century.

 

Last Saturday at the Nat’l Gallery of Art I watched “Man on a Tightope”, a 1953 film directed by Elia Kazan that is the most powerful cinematic depiction of life under Communism I have seen. It bears comparison with “To Kill a Mockingbird” as a record of oppression and injustice.

 

A couple of descriptions from the film’s page on IMDb.com:

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046040/ <http://mail2.avemaria.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046040/>

 

‘Fredric March is a “Man on a Tightrope” in this 1953 film also starring Adolphe Menjou. 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 (March) is a seemingly weak man. 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. . . . 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.’

 

AND

 

‘This movie shows a more subtle critique of communism than the usual apocalyptic view of saber-rattling generals and madman tyrants.

Czechoslovakia could have been the shopfront for communism because it wasn’t as ravaged by World War II as were some other countries, and the Soviets didn’t treat it as a conquered province grafted onto its empire. The country was prosperous before World War II and had a democratic government for twenty years after World War I. Even in Czechoslovakia, the communists imposed one degradation after another upon the people while promoting itself with demagogic rhetoric that communism was the desire of the working man — except that nobody had the right to say “no” anymore. The communists nationalized Cernik’s circus, only to pay him a very generous salary as compensation as a manager of a state enterprise; then they made the money worthless through currency “reforms” that pauperized all but the communists and enriched the communists. Sudden horror and slow degradation lead to the same misery, only at different rates.’

 

The second half of the movie is as suspenseful as anything in cinema.

 

I found that this film, and many others directed by Kazan, were released as part of an 18-disc set in 2010 by 20th Century Fox:

 

http://www.foxconnect.com/elia-kazan-collection-the-dvd-widescreen.html <http://mail2.avemaria.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.foxconnect.com/elia-kazan-collection-the-dvd-widescreen.html>

 

(I’m darned impressed to see that the Tulsa Public Library owns this set, including copies of Man on a Tightrope – so fellow Okies, get thee to the downtown library.)

 

Parents should show their children films like this one and “The Diary of Anne Frank” so that young people have some notion of what it’s like to live under a totalitarian government – to understand the yearning of people like Karel Czernik and Sophie Scholl who risk everything for freedom – and to appreciate the liberty won for us in the blood and suffering of the Revolution by General Washington and the other founding fathers of our country.

 

KK