Indeed, The Circus <\/em>is a great place to start anyone on Chaplin\u2019s Little Tramp, the most iconic figure in all of film history. This is true despite the fact that Chaplin birthed him some fourteen years earlier, an inchoate character in an inchoate Hollywoodland, the two growing up together. In knockabout slapstick shorts churned out at Mutual, Essanay and then First National Pictures, Chaplin developed the Tramp\u2019s persona, from a stock \u201cInebriate\u201d\u2014born of Chaplin\u2019s years as a pantomime comedian on British and then American vaudeville stages\u2014to the quintessential hobo-gentleman, materially poor yet noble at heart and rich in imagination. As the run times grew longer, Chaplin elaborated his ingenuous gags and increasingly subordinated them to story, along the way developing his signature blend of comedy, pathos, and, ultimately, serious Art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Chaplin\u2019s first feature film, The Kid<\/em> (1921) nails the pathos, but the gags are less hilarious\u2014excepting that famous window-breaking scam he runs with the titular kid. The same can be said for his next feature, The Gold Rush <\/em>(1925)\u2014excepting the \u2018Dance of the Dinner Rolls\u2019 and the precipice-teetering cabin, which are required viewing, of course. While inarguably masterpieces, these first two Tramp features are heavier films, weighted with Chaplin\u2019s working through of childhood traumas (i.e., abandonment, poverty, and hunger in South London) and grand American mythologies (i.e., rags-to-riches opportunity). These films also give us the Little Tramp en media res,<\/em> needing no introduction to contemporary global audiences who knew and loved him, making Chaplin Hollywood\u2019s first megawatt international celebrity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only is The Circus <\/em>lighter on its feet, and the most balanced in its blend of comedy and pathos, it also acts as a sort of origin story for the Tramp\u2014while self-reflexively commenting on Chaplin\u2019s career. The film opens on a paper hoop printed with a star, through which a young circus rider (Merna Kennedy) jumps. Dismounting, she is chastised and punished by her tyrannical stepfather\/ringmaster (Allan Garcia) for perceived inadequacies; he shoves her to the ground and denies her dinner. Meanwhile, we meet the Tramp, languishing outside the Big Top at the side shows, marginalized, \u201chungry and broke\u201d (per an intertitle), and misconstrued as criminal by the authorities, as usual. He is pursued by police into a hall of mirrors (an inspiration for Orson Welles\u2019 Lady in Shanghai <\/em>) and then onto a Noah\u2019s Ark attraction, pretending to be one of its mechanical dummies to avoid detection\u2014with the ineffable qualities of Chaplin\u2019s physical comedy on full display. Finally, he is chased into the circus ring and onto a revolving platform mid-ring, doing circles with a cop hot on his heels. The audience thinks it\u2019s all an act, and finds the Tramp more uproariously funny the more indignities he suffers, better than all the other old-fashioned clowns combined. The ringmaster hires the Tramp and makes him the star attraction, recognizing his chance to restore the circus\u2019 fading fortunes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tramp soon befriends Merna, connected as they are by hunger and the ringmaster\u2019s exploitation. Like so many of Chaplin\u2019s heroines, Merna ignites the Tramp\u2019s innate chivalry and romanticism. When the circus\u2019 fortune-teller predicts that Merna will find \u201clove and marriage with a dark handsome man who is near you now,\u201d the Tramp believes himself that man. Enter Rex (Harry Crocker), a \u2018dark handsome\u2019 tightrope walker and the actual prophesied groom, a romantic rival against whom the Tramp will initially parry (ridiculously) but to whom he will ultimately concede (graciously) for the heroine\u2019s sake, ever the martyr to unrequited love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along the way, the Tramp-as-Top-Clown suffers many additional indignities-as-gags, highlighting the burden of being \u201cThe Funny Man.\u201d He accidentally swallows a horse pill and marvelously botches a magician\u2019s act. He is harassed by a relentless mule and trapped in a lion\u2019s cage, in a famous scene achieved by painstaking double exposures within the camera of Chaplin\u2019s longtime director of photography Roland Totheroh. Finally, in the side-splitting climax, he spectacularly tussles with biting monkeys on the high wire, his pants around his ankles\u2014trying to out-tightrope Rex, absurdly enough. After this hysterical humiliation, for which he is fired, the Tramp understands that Merna\u2019s happiness can only be ensured by her coupledom with Rex, which he arranges. In an ending as iconic as anything in Chaplin\u2019s filmography, the Tramp sits alone in the now open-air and deserted ring, after the happy couple and the circus wagons roll away. He contemplates a torn paper star, gesturing towards the film\u2019s opening and, extra-diegetically, the loneliness of stardom. But then the Tramp sighs, stands, and walks away from the camera, with a jaunty heel kick, a signal of his character-defining resilience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If The Circus<\/em> seems like a perfectly light-footed entertainment, Chaplin\u2019s experience of making it was more like the Tramp\u2019s torturous catastrophe-courting high wire act. The production was plagued with tribulations: a film lab mishap in which Chaplin lost a month of rushes (of that arduous tightrope scene, no less); a preproduction storm that destroyed one set; and a mid-production fire that destroyed more. Chaplin\u2019s personal life was equally disastrous. He was embroiled in a divorce from his second wife, Lita Grey, the first of the public relations nightmares that would finally tarnish Chaplin\u2019s lofty status with the moviegoing public and contribute to his exile in 1952. A year into the shoot, he suffered a nervous breakdown, and suspended filming for months to recover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No one can blame Chaplin, then, for preferring to leave The Circus<\/em> behind him, not even mentioning it in his 1964 autobiography. This, even though it was the only film for which he won an Oscar, in a special category invented for the occasion\u2014for \u201cversatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing\u201d\u2014notwithstanding his Lifetime Achievement Oscar of 1972.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, the filmmaker\u2019s own neglect helps explain why The Circus <\/em>was temporarily undervalued. Happily, its stock has trended upward ever since its re-release in 1969, at which time Chaplin himself marveled at its inventiveness, charm, and vitality\u2014perhaps the most important critical reappraisal of all. <\/em>The Circus <\/em>is now streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a> and HBOMax<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/circus1-1024x576.jpg\")
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