#996: CHAPLIN, Charles: The Circus (1928/1969)

CHAPLIN, Charles (United States)
The Circus [1928/1969]
Spine #996
Blu-ray

In the last film he made during the silent era, Charlie Chaplin revels in the art of the circus, paying tribute to the acrobats and pantomimists who inspired his virtuoso pratfalls. After being mistaken for a pickpocket, Chaplin's Tramp flees into the ring of a traveling circus and soon becomes the star of the show, falling for the troupe's bareback rider along the way. Despite its famously troubled production, this gag-packed comedy ranks among Chaplin's finest, thanks to some of the most audacious set pieces of the director-performer's career, including a close brush with a lion and a climactic tightrope walk with a barrelful of monkeys. The Circus, which was rereleased in 1969 with a new score by Chaplin, is an uproarious high-wire act that showcases silent cinema's most popular entertainer at the peak of his comic powers.

72 minutes

Black & White
Monaural
1:33:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2019

Director/Writer

Charles Chaplin was 39 when he wrote and directed The Circus.

Other Chaplin films in the Collection:

#799: The Kid (1921)
#680: City Lights (1931)
#543: Modern Times (1936)
#565: The Great Dictator (1940)
#615: The Gold Rush (1925/1942)
#652: Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
#756: Limelight (1952)

The Film

Noah’s Ark, Venice, CA 1919

Noah’s Ark, Kennywood — Pittsburgh

After the Venice model was licensed to parks all over the world, the Noah’s Ark became ubiquitous in amusement parks all over the world.

Today, the Kennywood ark — where I spent many a summer day in my youth, slipping and sliding along the various contraptions — is the only one left. The story is told in depth here.

**

So begins The Circus — iris in — a revolving funhouse of a film that was probably compared unfavorably with his previous film, The Gold Rush (1925) {Spine #615}, though it is quite different in scope and spirit.

The Tramp is escaping from a policeman, who is chasing him due to a mix-up of who’s the pickpocket — when he lunges into the Ark and finds himself in a hall of mirrors. The comedy is just beginning.

And nobody was better at it than Charlie Chaplin.

Despite the 1969 addition of Charlie singing “Swing Little Girl” at the beginning, this is still a silent film from 1928. There are lots of intertitles, and when they’re not needed, they’re not there! Chaplin does so much with pure pantomime, that even the existing intertitles are sometimes unnecessary.

Merna Kennedy is the girl, whose part is confined to playing “straight man” to Charlie’s gags — but she is nevertheless stunning in her stillness.

Allan Garcia — in a typical bad-guy role — rolls and tumbles with Chaplin’s physicality, and never smiles.

The supporting cast is all great — but this is Charlie’s show and he is always at center frame.

In the end, Charlie is alone in the dirt circle where the tent used to be with the crumpled-up star which covered the hoop Merna had to jump through. He kicks it with that famous backwards-foot movement, and walks away.

Iris out.

**

His personal life wasn’t so great at the time — and it took him several years to complete the film. But the finished product was fantastic, and all these years later, the restoration job is incredible.

Film Rating (0-60):

56

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by Pamela Hutchinson.

“‘I’d like to make a circus picture.’”

“So it came to be that. The Circus is not just a film with a grand finale set on a high place, it’s a film about the pressure to be funny, about a man who can make people laugh only when he isn’t trying, and in which the identity of the Tramp himself begins to fracture.”

Commentary

Featuring Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance.

Vance — a Chaplin expert — sums up the whole thing:

“The idea that it would be comic if Charlie was funny to the public when he was unconscious of what he was doing, but unfunny when he consciously attempted to be funny, was a key thematic idea that united the whole plot of the film.”

Interview 1

With Chaplin from 1969.

Charlie acting modest. But not too modest.

Interview 2

With Chaplin’s son Eugene Chaplin.

From the Chaplin museum in Switzerland. Gene (Oona’s kid) is pleasant enough; he takes us through a bunch of home movies, where Charlie always hams it up for the camera. Rex Harrison and Truman Capote also show up.

In the Service of the Story

A new program on the film’s visual effects and production design by film scholar Craig Barron.

This is a fantastic extra!

Barron literally takes apart the Bell & Howell camera Chaplin used and shows us how he made all those neat double-exposures: the lion cage, the scene where Charlie leaves his own body and pummels the circus master, the high-wire act with the monkeys …

The tricks are all revealed (Chaplin would have been aghast!) … including the actual metal mattes used to block part of the negative from being exposed, so they could run the film through a second time.

Barron even exposes a few flaws which can be seen only under a microscopic frame-by-frame examination. Chaplin was too good to let anything go that the viewer could actually see.

Chaplin Today: “The Circus”

A 2003 documentary on the film featuring filmmaker Emir Kusturica.

A short exposition on some earlier films that Chaplin “borrowed” from to make The Circus. Kusturica watches the film on a small screen with much delight and emotion …

Excerpted audio interview

From 1998 with Chaplin musical associate Eric James.

Fascinating listen to how James and Chaplin worked together. James took a lot of abuse from him, but learned to make his work seem as if Charlie himself had put it all together.

Chaplin couldn’t read or write music, he seems to have had an uncommon talent for imagining the complete orchestration. But the chore for James was putting it all together — having Chaplin reject it at every stage — until it finally completely suited him.

Unused café sequence

With new score by composer Timothy Brock, and related outtakes with narration by comedy choreographer Dan Kamin.

Deleted scenes scored and edited together. Plus take after take of various scenes which didn’t make the final cut. It’s a miracle that they were preserved at all.

Chaplin’s ratio in The Circus for film shot to film used was about 35:1 …

Newly discovered outtakes

Featuring the Tramp and the circus rider.

Deleted scene featuring Charlie and Merna. Charlie is sporting a new checkered coat and twirls around nervously — he has the ring (that he has bought for $5 from the old clown [Henry Bergman]) in his pocket, but is too shy to give it her …

Many takes from the “B” camera (foreign market negative) of Charlie just looking in a mirror and putting on his hat … there’s the 35:1 …

Excerpts

From the original recording session for the film’s opening song, “Swing Little Girl.”

At the age of 79, Chaplin could still manage to sing a good song! His pitch is fine, his sense of the rubato rhythm is perfect, and he is right there when the thing modulates up a half-step!

At the start of one take, the director yells, “someone tell that workman to stop talking to himself.”

Footage

Of the film’s 1928 Hollywood premiere.

Silent footage at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, January 27, 1928.

The celebs of the day move up to the mic, as the adoring crowd behind the ropes look on enviously …

1969 Rerelease trailers

One domestic, one foreign (French). 

Extras Rating (0-40):

37

56 + 37 =

93

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