Alarm in the Circus

1954 film

Wolfgang Kohlhaase
Hans Kubisch

Produced byPaul RamacherStarringErwin GeschonneckCinematographyWerner BergmannEdited byUrsula KahlbaumMusic byGünter Klück

Production
company

DEFA

Distributed byProgress Film

Release date

27 August 1954 (1954-08-27)

Running time

75 minutesCountryEast GermanyLanguageGerman

Alarm in the Circus (German: Alarm im Zirkus) is an East German crime film directed by Gerhard Klein. It was released in 1954.

Plot

Klaus and Max are two boys from West Berlin, whose families are too poor to pay for their higher education. They face a bleak future. Their only hobby is boxing, and they are both desperate to purchase real boxing gloves. The two meet Klott, a gangster who owns a bar that serves American soldiers. Klott offers to pay them if they assist him in stealing valuable horses from a circus in East Berlin. The two agree and travel to the Soviet zone, where they meet a girl named Helli, a member of the Free German Youth, who explains to them that in the communist east, the lack of money will not bar their way to education. The two realize the error of their ways, contact the People's Police and help the officers thwart Klott's plans and arrest the other thieves working for him. The two remain in East Berlin.

Cast

Erwin Geschonneck as Klott
Uwe-Jens Pape as Jimmy
Karl Kendzia as Batta
Ulrich Thein as Herbert
Hans Winter as Klaus
Ernst-Georg Schwill as Max
Gertrud Keller as Helli
Annelise Matschulat as Mrs. Weigel
Siegfried Weiß as Hepfield
Peter Dornseif as Police officer
Günther Haack as Catcher
Horst Giese as uncredited role

Production

Alarm in the Circus was the first of the so-called "Berlin films", a trilogy of pictures that were made in collaboration between director Gerhard Klein and writer Wolfgang Kohlhaase. These films were notable for their pioneering of neorealism in German cinema and for the manner in which they reflected the reality of the city in the years before the building of the Berlin Wall. They were also critical of the Americanization of its western side. Alarm in the Circus was followed by the sequels A Berlin Romance (1956) and Berlin - Schönhauser Corner (1957).^[1]

Reception

Alarm in the Circus was viewed by 3.6 million people in 1954, becoming the highest-grossing East German film of the year,^[2] and sold 5,515,078 tickets in total.^[3] Klein and Kohlhaase both won the National Prize, 3rd degree, for their work on the film.^[4]

The Catholic Film Service defined the film as "exciting, well-made crime film that presents the background of a divided Berlin in a highly authentic manner."^[5] Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor wrote that it had "drawn a clear contrast between the city's halves that fit the official communist paradigm."^[6]

References

^ Allan, Seán; Sandford, John, eds. (1999). DEFA: East German cinema, 1946–1992. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-1-57181-753-2.
^ Alarm in the Circus Archived 2011-07-25 at the Wayback Machine on PROGRESS' website.
^ List of the 50 highest-grossing DEFA films.
^ Alarm in the Circus Archived 2011-07-25 at the Wayback Machine on DEFA Foundation's website.
^ Alarm in the Circus on the German Film Lexicon.
^ Rollins, Peter C.; O'Connor, John E., eds. (2008). Why We Fought: America's Wars in Film and History. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. p. 323. ISBN 978-0-8131-9191-1.