Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed [Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos] **** (1968, Hannelore Hoger, Sigi Graue, Alfred Edel, Bernd Höltz, Eva Oertel) – Classic Movie Review 13,893

Alexander Kluge’s 1968 West German film Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed [Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos] won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

Writer/ director Alexander Kluge’s 1968 West German film Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed [Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos] won the Golden Lion best film award at the Venice Film Festival in 1968 and won the Film Award in Gold for Outstanding Feature Film (Bester Spielfilm) at the German Film Awards in 1969.

Alexander Kluge’s restlessly imaginative, award-winning second feature (after Abschied von Gestern – Anita G) tells the tale of a circus boss (Hannelore Hoger) who, after a failed attempt to establish the perfect big top, enters the world of television instead.

Kluge creates his highly symbolic story in an interesting 1968 avant-garde style collage  fashion that intercuts the performed fictional drama with voiceovers, old library film, talking heads and photographs, newsreels and quotations from philosophers. With all the imagination and intelligence involved, this is an intriguing and crucial early work of the New German Cinema movement, influenced by the early 60s French New Wave cinema.

The story of a failing circus, whose owner finds her dream of a new kind of circus may be over-optimistic, is a clearly metaphor for Kluge’s frustrations in prompting New German Cinema.

It is also known as Artists at the Top of the Big Top: Disorientated.

Kluge’s Golden Lion best film award at the Venice Film Festival in 1968 was highly controversial, and created a political scandal because of its progressive views that resulted in no Golden Lions being awarded from then up to 1979.

Alexander Kluge (14 February 1932 – 25 March 2026) 

Hannelore Hoger (20 August 1939 – 21 December 2024)

Cast: Hannelore Hoger, Siegfried Graue (Sigi Graue), Alfred Edel, Bernd Höltz, Eva Oertel, Kurt Jürgens, Gilbert Houcke, Wanda Bronska-Pampuch, Herr Jobst, Hans-Ludger Schneider, Klaus Schwarzkopf.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,893

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