Generating laughs after inadvertently interrupting a big top routine, a tramp is offered a job by a circus in this Charlie Chaplin silent comedy. The film is mostly a series of circus-themed skits thrown together, but there are several interesting ideas at hand as the manager avoids telling him he is their biggest attraction (to avoid paying a handsome salary) and as the tramp is only ever able to make the circus audiences laugh when he is not trying to be funny at all. There is also a touching subplot in which he tries to help an abused circus worker and the film creates an authentic relationship between the pair that never once feels sentimental. If there is one thing to hold against the film though, it is the fact that the first fifteen minutes (before Chaplin is invited to join the circus) is far funnier than anything else afterwards with the subsequent movie never quite recapturing the hilarity of Chaplin running amok in a house of mirrors, running in synchrony with a thief and repeatedly whacking the thief on the head when pretending to be mechanical. Still, this is an amusing movie from start to finish, and one with something surprisingly intelligent to say about how the best humour is spontaneous rather than rehearsed.
Review of The Circus
