PBS’ PEEK AT ‘INSIDE SOVIET CIRCUS’

Flying through the air with the greatest of ease is a daring young comrade on a flying trapeze.

This is not Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey or Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. There are no red-and-gold wagons, no steam calliopes, no cotton candy, no bearded ladies or snake charmers or fire eaters, no elephants or sawdust. And when there’s trouble, the traditional call for help may be “Hey, Vladimir” instead of “Hey, Rube.”

It’s still the greatest show on earth, however. Soviet earth, anyway.

“Kids there skip into the circus,” said Miriam Birch, whose recent nine weeks in the Soviet Union yielded 40 hours of film that now has been shrunk to 58 minutes for a “National Geographic” special on PBS.

“I was so sick of Soviet circuses after nine weeks, I said, ‘Take me away; take me to the ballet,’ ” said Birch, laughing wearily.

This is a preliminary report, for “Inside the Soviet Circus” doesn’t air until March 9. It will be the eighth “National Geographic” special for the award-laden Birch in a career that celebrates documentary making as high art.

She writes. She shapes. She polishes. She has an eye for beauty and texture. The woman is truly good. Her most recent “National Geographic” was the inspiring “Jerusalem: Within These Walls,” and she was also the creative spine for last November’s challenging “A Day in the Life of America,” whose 23 film crews compiled a vast, eclectic national video.

Fine. Bully for past triumphs and all of that. But what has she done for us lately?

This.

We were in a Los Feliz editing room watching exciting footage from the nation of much-ballyhooed glasnost : The circus lights go down, a concert orchestra begins playing and. . . .

“All the concerns about glasnost are beside the point here, because the circus is its own spangled world,” said Birch, who is writing the narration for her program. “People go against the laws of gravity and wild animals don’t bite you. Everything is pretty, exciting, funny.”

Two centuries after arriving from Europe, the circus has become a comparative afterthought in the United States, the giant companies having been disbanded and reduced to footnotes after losing the battle for entertainment dollars to sports, TV and movies.

In the Soviet Union, though, circus is an institution--beloved, heavily attended and state operated.

It may be that the escapist, unprovocative entertainment provided by the circus serves the Kremlin’s interests as a sort of national tranquilizer that shifts attention from serious problems. Judging from Birch’s footage, however, it’s as much state of the art as state of the state.

“They have more than 100 circus troupes that work year round,” she said. “Circus is a part of life. Yearly attendance is 72 million. There are 70 permanent circus buildings and 24,000 circus employes, all administered by a central agency called Soyuzgostsirk. The Moscow circus building has this incredible technology, with movable floors.”

A sampling of her footage shows a Soviet circus that stresses artistry over death-defying peril--aerialists work with nets and safety wires--and one that is more elaborate than the American version, and far more dramatic.

But not always. On the small screen, a skimpily costumed female circus performer--the scene could almost pass for Las Vegas--is a hula-hooping demon, rolling her hips in a way that recalls that bygone American fad.

“The hula hoop is very big there,” Birch said. “And if you love clowns, you’ll love Russian clowns.” Birch has on film internationally famous Oleg Popov, the former printer’s apprentice who is now the Soviet clown of clowns.

She also profiled an aerialist troupe known as the Cranes.

Most Soviet circus performers are graduates of the Moscow Circus School, whose students Birch captured on camera in a mugging mood. It’s fascinating, charming footage.

Interestingly, a few of the students are from Laos and Nicaragua. Only 80 of 3,000 who annually audition for the school are accepted, Birch said. “If you graduate, you are assured 20 years’ work. This is the kind of security that workers in the West dream of.”

Yet the circus is a grueling, relatively Spartan life, said Birch, who has logged some tough hours herself while traveling the world as a film maker.

Making a “National Geographic” is “like having a baby,” she said. “You forget what it’s like or you wouldn’t do another one. You work seven days a week. You have to get up before sunrise because the best light is just before sunrise and just after the sun goes down. You’re working long days in a very foreign environment and away from home and friends.”

As in the Soviet Union--where Birch and her American crew of five, plus two Soviet liaison personnel, visited circuses in five cities, following an earlier advance trip she made with co-executive producers Thomas Skinner and Dennis Kane.

“Americans have this idea that the Soviet Union is a world power, but being there is like being in a Third World country,” she said. “The telephones didn’t work. They had never seen a traveler’s check before in Voroshilovgrad. There was no Telex in L’vov or in Ashkabad. It was inefficient, slow and shabby. We had to prepay for all of our hotels and cars. But if you lost your voucher, you were out of luck.”

Birch’s crew was arrested twice, moreover--once while filming two aerialists in a L’vov flower market (“We had permission to film, but the crew was nabbed and hauled in anyway”) and a second time for filming the lines in front of Lenin’s Tomb in Moscow’s Red Square.

Another time, her crew was given permission to film the Cranes inside a moving train, but was forbidden to shoot the countryside through the window. “We did it anyway,” Birch said.

Circus spangles clashing with Soviet reality.