Revis­it­ing The Cir­cus: Char­lie Chaplin’s trou­bled com­ic triumph

By the time Char­lie Chap­lin unveiled The Cir­cus at the start of 1928, cin­e­ma was already under the spell of the ​‘talkie’, the release of The Jazz Singer hav­ing sound­ed the death knell for the silent era three months ear­li­er. Chaplin’s finan­cial auton­o­my allowed him to retain his silence in the inter­ven­ing years, but both 1931’s City Lights and 1936’s Mod­ern Times fea­tured moments of speech and syn­chro­nised sound. By 1940 Chap­lin final­ly suc­cumbed to pop­u­lar con­ven­tion with The Great Dic­ta­tor, mak­ing The Cir­cus his last tru­ly silent picture.

Even with­out the added com­pli­ca­tions that came with shoot­ing sound, The Cir­cus was Chaplin’s most trou­bled pro­duc­tion, tak­ing close to two years to com­plete. A sim­ple enough premise – the Tramp joins a trav­el­ling cir­cus – didn’t appear to offer any major logis­ti­cal prob­lems, while shoot­ing in his own stu­dio and on his own bankroll gave Chap­lin all the free­dom he need­ed. But things quick­ly began to con­spire against the direc­tor. The cir­cus tent where much of the action takes place was destroyed by bad weath­er, poor han­dling of the film neg­a­tive made ear­ly footage worth­less, and Chaplin’s stu­dio was dec­i­mat­ed by fire. How­ev­er, it was only when Chaplin’s famous­ly fraught per­son­al life came under the spot­light that the film’s future became uncertain.

Chaplin’s mar­riage to Lita Grey had bro­ken down, and the even­tu­al divorce pro­ceed­ings delayed pro­duc­tion indef­i­nite­ly. The film was aimed to be seized as assets, prompt­ing Chap­lin to smug­gle the reels into safe hid­ing – the sec­ond time he was forced to do so fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar inci­dent dur­ing the mak­ing of 1921’s The Kid. The stand off over The Cir­cus last­ed for eight long months, with Chap­lin suf­fer­ing a men­tal break­down in the process that caused his hair to turn white, mak­ing him vir­tu­al­ly unrecog­nis­able out­side of his Tramp guise. This extend­ed break in film­ing led to still fur­ther prob­lems, as the real estate boom had trans­formed the exist­ing land­scape. Mean­while, one of the cir­cus wag­ons was stolen as Chap­lin pre­pared the final scene.

All this may have dri­ven Chap­lin to break­ing point, but secret­ly he rev­elled in see­ing the Tramp caus­ing chaos, under­stand­ing that when things go wrong, it becomes more hilar­i­ous for the audi­ence. Things going awry is only to be expect­ed when­ev­er the Tramp is involved, and in get­ting caught up in the cir­cus, the char­ac­ter finds fame as only he ever could – through fail­ure. Chaplin’s method of not work­ing from scripts but instead fol­low­ing ideas through to their con­clu­sion led to the film evolv­ing into a glo­ri­ous bal­anc­ing act of set pieces, with Chaplin’s skill as both per­former and direc­tor shin­ing through. It’s chaos, yes, but metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed chaos.

An ear­ly scene in which the Tramp imi­tates a fair­ground automa­ton show­cas­es Chaplin’s supreme under­stand­ing of cin­e­mat­ic rhythm, and anoth­er where the Tramp finds him­self inside a lion’s cage reveals a rare lev­el of com­mit­ment and metic­u­lous­ness. The lat­ter scene was filmed in 200 takes, with Chap­lin often posi­tion­ing him­self a whisker away from the lion – but even that pales in com­par­i­son to the film’s pièce de résis­tance, the cli­mac­tic tightrope walk. This extra­or­di­nary sequence was dreamed up ear­ly on by Chap­lin, and would become one of his most dar­ing feats. It sees the Tramp per­form a tightrope act through the help of a hid­den wire, only for the cable to snap, leav­ing him com­plete­ly unaid­ed with a long way to fall. Chap­lin doesn’t stop there though, throw­ing in a swarm of mon­keys which writhe over him, bit­ing his nose, putting their tails in his mouth and pro­ceed­ing to remove his trousers.

Remark­ably the scene in ques­tion took over 700 takes to com­plete, though this gar­gan­tu­an num­ber is part­ly due to part of the film stock being dam­aged. Still, the phys­i­cal­i­ty required to per­form this sequence, time and time again, is stag­ger­ing – espe­cial­ly giv­en the con­tin­ued sub­jec­tion to mon­key assault. Such exer­tion was clear­ly not some­thing Chap­lin savoured, as he gives no men­tion of the film in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, despite hav­ing received a spe­cial award from the Acad­e­my for writ­ing, act­ing, direct­ing and pro­duc­ing for his efforts. Yet there is evi­dence to sug­gest that Chap­lin even­tu­al­ly found rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with film, as he returned to it some years lat­er to com­pose a new score.

Chap­lin suf­fered great­ly to bring The Cir­cus to the screen, and its pro­tract­ed pro­duc­tion ensured he was well aware of The Jazz Singer and its seis­mic impact. At the end of his film, the cir­cus packs up and leaves town, the Tramp watch­ing on before head­ing off in the oppo­site direc­tion, alone. The Cir­cus not only show­cased Chaplin’s com­ic genius, pro­vid­ing some of his most icon­ic images, it also reaf­firmed his desire to do things on his own terms. This great silent clown would not go so quietly.