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| Images courtesy of Mosfilm |
Ivan Maksimovich Poddubny was a Soviet Ukrainian based
professional wrestler born in 1871 in the village of Krasenivka into a family
of Zaporozhian Cossacks and was forced to leave home at the age of twenty to
make a name for himself, working as a fitter in the ports of Sevastopol and
Feodosiya where he also began exercising with kettlebells before engaging in
some occasional wrestling matches.
Between 1897-1898, Poddubny nicknamed Ivan the Great or The Iron Ivan
joined a traveling circus tour, initially touring in Sevastopol and eventually
Kiev sports arenas where he gained further prominence as a professional
wrestler eventually touring Moscow and Paris where he became the World Champion
in wrestling circa 1905.
It is this early intermediary period between joining the
circus tour and blossoming into a full blown international professional
wrestling champion that is the focal point of Boris Barnet and Konstantin
Yudin’s co-directorial circus sports biopic The Wrestler and the Clown
from 1957. A film initially started by
Yudin as a biographical drama about a loose collaborative partnership and
personal friendship between Ivan Poddubny and clown Anatoly Durov, it was a
difficult shoot involving the sudden death of Yudin following an on-set injury
and Boris Barnet stepped in to finish the picture. The final film represents not only one of the
earliest examples of wrestling in Eastern European cinema but also stands out
as a progenitor to blistering critiques of the industry itself ala Darren
Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, highlighting the hardship, exploitation and
tragedies plaguing the business and especially its performers.
Turn of the century Odessa, fort loader and then-amateur
wrestler Ivan Poddubny (The Diamond Arm actor Stanislav Chekan) is
scouting the area looking for work when he meets clown trainer Anatoly Durov
(Aleksandr Mikhaylov) also seeking employment in the circus. Sparking a friendship and professional
relationship right away, the two go into the business together with Durov
supporting his family and ailing child.
However, it proves hard and heavy under the ruthless rule of a
domineering circus manager who binds them tooth and nail to a strict contract
including but not limited to Durov being forced to perform the night of his
child’s passing. Between losing his own
love to a trapeze accident, defending his friend Durov against near-blindness
when a saboteur poisons his clown makeup and later fending off a cheating
French wrestler Raoul Buchet who douses himself in olive oil to slip free from
Poddubny during any grappling, life for The Wrestler and the Clown in
this profession proves more than a little difficult.
A sports biopic in the form of a visually stunning circus
wrestling spectacle, a triumph of period production and costume design and a
powerful piece of emotional drama highlighting the hardships endured by many of
its key personnel, The Wrestler and the Clown is a rousing screen thrill
and occasional tearjerker of 1957 Soviet cinema. A rare example of Soviet-era wrestling on the
silver screen featuring snarky satirical humor poking fun at authority figures while
also being a plea for the plight and rights of circus performers, the Mosfilm
production despite having some tragic stumbles getting to the finish line nevertheless
soars as a biographical portrait of the artist ala Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight
where lurking behind that clown face and smile is pain and sorrow.
From a visual end, the film is dazzling with scenic splendor
lensed by none other than Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession and It
Can’t Be! cinematographer Sergei Poluyanov who captures the glitter and
scope of the circus arena often split between wide shots of the whole audience
and crew and tight close-ups of the actors’ faces. The original score by the late Annushka composer
Yuriy Biryukov finds the right measure between grandiosity, sadness and finally
exultation tracking the emotional brick roads traversed by the film’s two
heroes played with a startling amount of heartfelt emotion onscreen. Despite their physical differences, both
Stanislav Chekan as the burly Ivan Poddubny and Aleksandr Mikhaylov as the smaller
but no less determined and unbending Anatoly Durov make quite a team onscreen
together and have their own separate turns to show their response to respective
hardships laid upon them by their circus managing superior.
Released in 1957 though strangely neglected decades later by
the Mosfilm giant, The Wrestler and the Clown was the first time the
saga of Ivan Poddubny and his stage pal Anatoly Durov was told to moviegoers
despite the real life Poddubny having a sizable international career in
wrestling. One of the only Soviet era
examples of the circus and/or wrestling on film virtually anywhere outside of
the Kinopanorama epic Cinerama’s Russian Adventure in 1966, the film is
again a bit like a Charlie Chaplin film which mixes the high spectacles and
wonderment of the circus show with all the behind-the-scenes baggage and
turmoil in plain view. Decades later in
2014 in the Russian Federation era, the story of Ivan Poddubny was told again
this time with 9th Company actor Mikhail Porechenkov in the
titular role of The Iron Ivan. While
that film remains unseen by me, I’m hard pressed to believe it’ll come anywhere
near the awe, wonderment and power of The Wrestler and the Clown. Think of it as the Soviet Union’s sort of proto-Beyond
the Mat.
--Andrew Kotwicki
