The Circus (1928)

Genre is an interesting thing. There are very often blurred lines separating works into genre classifications. The more closely you examine any work the more difficult it becomes to lock it down to a specific genre. Very often this distinction comes down to a wishy-washy "I know it when I see it approach".

Charlie Chaplin's The Circus (1928) is a good example of this. For those with a cursory familiarity of film history it's very easy to guess, by it's director, that The Circus is a comedy but I want you to put that  knowledge aside for a moment and consider this synopsis:

A young woman is working and living in a circus run by her abusive step father. Attending this circus is a homeless man who unwittingly becomes implicated in a theft. While running from the police that man inadvertently interrupts a circus act. The audience finds his antics hilarious and he is offered an interview with the circus. The man eventually gets hired and befriends the young woman. With his new found success he protects her from her abusive stepfather. He falls in love with her but then the woman falls for a tightrope walker who is newly hired. The homeless man in his resulting despondency is unable to perform as well and eventually gets fired after attacking the circus owner for striking his step daughter. Later that night the daughter runs away from the circus and finds the now homeless and jobless man. He doesn't want her to stay with him because he can barely support himself. He then gets the idea to get the tightrope walker to marry her to take care of her where he can't. The tightrope walker does so and they both continue to work at the circus. The homeless man is offered his job back but declines.

Now putting aside the issue of the, not unexpected, female character with no agency (this is the 20's after all). This isn't the synopsis of a comedy; this is a tragedy. Even the ending could only be best described as bittersweet. The abusive ringleader may not be in a position to directly abuse his step daughter but he still controls her and her husband's income, and Chaplin's pure hearted lovable tramp comes away, as usual, with nothing. So it really does say a lot about Chaplin's comedic skill that I was laughing pretty much the whole way through. As usual his unbelievably skillful balletic slapstick (to use common parlance) slaps, and his usage of themes of economic despondency create an instantly relatable lead.

This isn't to say that any semblance of drama was undermined by the comedy. Quite the opposite. While modern action adventure films interrupt the drama for a joke, Chaplin intertwines the humor and drama. Notably this is done in a scene where the Tramp and the ringmaster's daughter are watching the tightrope walker perform. As the daughter cheers at the walker's successes and gasps at every little slip, the Tramp yawns at all of the walker's successes and cheers at every little slip. This intertwining of the comedy with the drama is a significant part of why many of Chaplin's movies are still loved and remembered by many to this day. While they are structured as a series of physical comedy bits linked with a story. They also work as genuinely affecting dramas in their own right.

Next week: the first academy award winner of the poster. And the first of the 30's: All Quiet on the Western Front.