Circus Stars

A documentary television series of the Nazi-Soviet War, edited from over 3.5 million feet of film taken by Soviet camera crews from the first day of the war, 22 June 1941, to the Soviet entry into Berlin in May 1945.

Following an introduction by Bing Crosby, the Cinerama screen widens for scenes of landscapes, cities, peoples, and entertainments of the Soviet Union. Highlights include the historic buildings and churches of Moscow, as the Kremlin; its subway and streets, a spring carnival, the seaside resorts on the Black Sea, a trip down the Volga River, skiers, a troika racing along a snow-covered road, a helicopter view of the North Pole, an Antarctic whale hunt, the capture of a wild boar in the Moyun-Kum of Central Asia, a race by reindeer-drawn sleds, divers in the Sea of Okhotsk, battling an octopus, the capture of antelopes, rafting logs down the Tisza River, and the development of new towns in Siberia. Other scenes include a visit to the Moscow Circus, where the renowned clown Oleg Popov performs, the dancing of the Moiseyev and Piatnitsky companies, and excerpts from the repertoire of the Bolshoi Theater Ballet.

A documentary about the reopening of Moscow's GUM, the largest department store in the Soviet Union.