Old Movies’ Review: ‘The Circus’ (1928)

by Laura Lai/Review

The film ‘The Circus’, written and directed by Charlie Chaplin, is a 1-hour silent, black and white comedy movie made in 1928. The action takes place at a circus, where a tramp (Charlie Chaplin) was the right person, at the right place and at the right time to be offered a job as an entertainer at the circus. Chased by the police, the tramp gets in the circus entertaining the crowd, who basically asked for him. Then there are lots of funny moments related to the tryouts for the job, as well as a love story unfolding between the tramp and the step-daughter (Merna Kennedy) of the circus owner (Allen Garcia).

The action is placed in the United States in 1928, when the economic situation of the country was looking bad. In October 1929 began the first world economic crisis, which lasted until 1933. It started in the United States, where 40-45 percent of the people were unemployed (those employed had the income diminished) and the strikes were frequent. The crisis hit the whole world and all economy’s branches. It is in this economic global context that in the 1920s in Europe, fascist governments took the political power: in Hungary, Italy, Portugal and then in Germany.

            Despite the limited technical means of those times, in order to express the unlimited artistic ideas that film directors have always been having, Charlie Chaplin made the historical dating of its movie perfectly clear although silently with hunger scenes and people on strike scenes. It is absolutely sensational the way Chaplin succeeded in including such despair scenes into a comedy, without using the despair in order to achieve a comedy, but only to time frame the movie. It was genius! Furthermore, despite the rough times, Chaplin did not omit to stress the drop of humanity still left in people by the scene in which the tramp shares a slice of bread.

            How did Charlie Chaplin achieve a comedy with the technical means of the beginning of the cinema, the make-up simplicity and without words or tone of the voice as the movie is silent? The director put lots of focus on the comicality of different situations: chases, mirror maze, revealing magician’s number, tight-rope walking and plenty of animals. For example, there is a scene where the tramp is on the tight-rope under the assault of monkeys, or in another scene the tramp is in a lion's cage. But foremost what makes this movie a comedy is Charlie Chaplin’s comedian talent to be so expressive and so funny when he expresses himself silently.

I believe that this type of rough contexts and these types of artistic findings to achieve a comedy are what make the movies eternal, its actors showing even better their brilliance and their directors acting like real magicians when achieving wide public success with those economic times’ budget and technological means. The movie ‘The Circus’ won the U.S. Academy Awards in 1929, and Charlie Chaplin got the Honorary Award of the U.S. Academy.