REVIEW: ‘The Circus’ (1928)
Posted On: Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | Posted By: Alex Carlson
Review: A-
One of Chaplin’s most underrated films and the one that Chaplin himself tried so very hard to forget is the 1928 feature The Circus. Released in between two of his better known films, The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931), The Circus features some of the tramp’s most hilarious bits and represents a deeper more introspective side for Chaplin.
In one sense The Circus is a departure from form for Chaplin as the narrative comes together with different pacing and different results than his more popular films. In another sense The Circus represents a reflection for Chaplin on some of his silent work that pre-dates his first feature film The Kid (1921). It’s a film with a dark side, but still manages to be absolutely hilarious.
The production of the film was plagued with problems that affected Chaplin both personally and professionally. During the two year filming period he was going through a highly publicized divorce with his second wife Lita Grey, which caused tabloid smears and public humiliation. He also was being harassed by the IRS who seized his property and ordered him to pay over a million dollars in back taxes. On top of the personal turmoil, filming was continually delayed due to technical difficulties. The first month of filming was lost due to a lab error and a fire destroyed the set in the midst of filming. This might explain why Chaplin tried to forget the film and didn’t even mention it in his own autobiography.
Despite being plagued with difficulties, Chaplin’s persistence paid off and the resulting film is an excellent addition to his already impressive canon.
The film opens with the Tramp being mistaken for a pickpocket leading to a brilliant chase scene featuring a run through a house of mirrors and the Tramp and a thief posing as clockwork automota. The end of the scene has the Tramp being chased into a circus tent where he outwits the policeman in the center ring, much to the delight of the circus audience. The ringmaster confronts the Tramp and offers him a job as a performer. Soon it becomes apparent that the Tramp can’t be funny when asked only when put in unusual situations, so the ringmaster gives him a job as a prop master, keeping it secret that he’s really the star of the show.
The villainous ringmaster’s plan is foiled by his own daughter, the circus’s trick rider and high ring artist, when she tells the Tramp that he is worth more than he is being paid. The Tramp’s infatuation with the ringmaster’s daughter develops until he realizes that she has fallen for the handsome tightrope walker. In a frantic attempt to win her love, the tramp attempts the tightrope in one of the funniest scenes in any of Chaplin’s films. He flails about while attached to a harness and is eventually assaulted by banana-hurling monkeys.
In an unusual twist, compared to Chaplin’s other films, The Circus has a bittersweet ending that I won’t give away for those who haven’t seen it. All I will say is the final shot must have had some influence on Michelangelo Antonioni’s films about isolation that will come three decades later.
The comedy in The Circus is consciously presented to the audience. In this Chaplin offers up one of the first analyses of comedy ever seen on film. As a circus performer, the Tramp cannot simply create comedy, he needs inspiration from real life. He is only funny when he is not trying to be. Chaplin offers up commentary as to what makes his films so successful. He does not use manufactured jokes like many comedians with routines, but rather he creates comedy organically through realistic situations. Chaplin’s comedy is just reality exaggerated.
Within all of the hilarious bits of comedy is a darker story that doesn’t really get the attention that it deserves featuring the ringmaster’s relationship with his daughter. The ringmaster starves and abuses his daughter, which is evident in several hard to watch scenes. The scenes of the girl getting abused are so intermixed with the comic scenarios, that the transitions are almost jarring.
The overall narrative is very simplistic, and a little bit different than Chaplin’s more famous films. The relationship between the tramp and the girl plays out less innocently and goes back and forth between being a subplot and the main objective. This was confusing at first, but begins to make more sense as the film approaches the end.
Whether or not The Circus could be called a masterpiece is debatable, but it absolutely does not deserve to be forgotten. The film is one of the funniest of Charlie Chaplin’s “Tramp” series and is one of the best films of the silent era.
