The Socialist Circus

The film Circus is about an american circus performer,Marion Dixon, who escapes from the U.S. because of a scandal. She has a baby with a man of color. The story leads us to the USSR where Marion escaped to with Von Kneishitz, and she is now performing in the Russian circus. She falls in love with another performer, Ivan Petrovich, and he falls in love with her. Von Kneishitz threatens Marion with revealing her scandal to the world if she does not stay with him. Another couple, Rayechka and Skamejkin, gets in the mix when Marion tries to tell Petrovich, in a letter, to meet with her before performing so that she can tell him about her child. Kneishitz gives her letter instead to Skamejkin and creates a mess, leaving both couples fitting. Eventually Marion and Rayechka, figure out what has happened and they solve the situation by switching places. Kneishitz finds out about the girls' scheme and he brings Marion's son out to the circus's  audience and reveals the scandal. In the end Kneishitz runs off because the audience shows him that they don't care, and in the end both couples are back together and they are all happy.
I liked this film. It had a good story and plot, the actors all did a really good job, and it has a happy ending. I think the portrayal of foreigners in this film is okay, It is not the best portrayal I've ever seen, but they did a good enough job. This film, however, did have some racist undertones which I did not like. The movie overall promoted equality to an extent, but the racist undertones cannot be ignored.
This film is very much so a Socialist Realist film. The whole ending scene where they are passing around the child and singing songs to him, makes it so. When Rayechka's father gives Marion his whole speech about accepting everyone, it is very obvious that this is the Socialist Realism talking.
I think that Socialist Realism leaves some room for creativity, but not much. The ending is basically already set up for you no matter what your story is.