Rent The Circus (1928)

More Chaplin - The Circus review by RJ

I've been working my way through the blu-ray box set of Chaplin's features and have made it as far as The Circus.

As I've said in my reviews of his previous features, I have not yet completely warmed to Chaplin. I should also say that this is the fourth review I've written of Chaplin's films in the last hour so I am flagging slightly and running out of things to say.

Very much like his previous film, The Gold Rush, this is often quite funny, occasionally quite touching, a bit sentimental.... it's a Chaplin film, what else can I say?

I definitely have Chaplin fatigue now. I think the rest of the box set will have to wait a little while.

Under the Big Top, With a Side-Eye at Stardom - The Circus review by griggs

It starts off like “easy” Chaplin: a simple setup, big heart, and jokes that land without a run-up. But the longer you’re under the big top, the more you notice how precisely it’s built — almost everything happens inside the circus, a closed world that keeps spitting out gags.

The romance is Tramp-standard, but with a helpful twist: Merna isn’t waiting to be “won”, and he’s not the only option. There’s a rival, and it stops the Tramp drifting into sainthood. He’s still a scrappy chaos magnet, just with the later-era tenderness switched on.

Best of all is how he becomes a star by accident. He doesn’t perform so much as scramble, and the circus sells that as genius. The hall of mirrors turns slapstick into a brief panic about who he even is. By the end, the circus feels like more than a setting — it chews people up, turns struggle into entertainment, then rolls on without looking back. Funny, warm, and quietly sharp.