One of Chaplin's funniest features, restored, with extras.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10209 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-22
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Formats: Black & White, PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 72 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Made in 1928 while he was in the middle of a painful divorce case, Charlie Chaplin's The Circus was so associated with bad memories for its maker that he refused even to mention it in his 1964 autobiography. Consequently, it has enjoyed less of a reputation than films such as The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931). However, while it's not quite in their league, The Circus undoubtedly deserves to be rescued from relative obscurity.

Here, Chaplin's Tramp is taken on as a clown at the circus, having been chased into the big tent by a policeman wrongly suspected of theft and wowing the audience with his pratfalls. He falls in love with the ill-treated ringmaster's daughter (Merna Kennedy) but is swiftly rivalled by a new addition to the circus, a handsome tightrope walker. To try to win back her affections the Tramp attempts the same act, culminating in the best sequence of the film, when he is assailed by monkeys as he totters amateurishly and precariously along a rope suspended high in the tent.

Although The Circus is marred by the rather hackneyed and (even in 1928) stale melodramatic device of the cruel father and imploring daughter, it scores high on its slapstick content, with routines involving a hall of mirrors and a mishap with a magician's equipment demonstrating Chaplin's dazzling ability to choreograph apparently improvised mayhem.

On the DVD: The Circus features a generous trove of extras on this two-disc set, including extracts from Lord Mountbatten's home movies of Chaplin, a deleted scene involving a prankster prize-fighter, as well as original footage showing how the perfectionist Chaplin would shoot and reshoot scenes. An introduction from David Robinson explains the adverse circumstances which held up the shooting of The Circus, including a fire and gales, which destroyed the set, while a further documentary delves into Chaplin's earliest work to provide context for the film. On the first disc, the film itself is an excellent transfer. --David Stubbs

DVD Description
The Little Tramp brings his slapstick hi-jinks to the big top. Charlie Chaplin's film The Circus begins in a fading circus, where the equestrienne (Merna Kennedy) can't jump the hoops and the clowns can't make the audience laugh. Outside on the midway, The Little Tramp falls into a series of wonderful comic routines that end when, pursued by a cop, he bursts into the tent's centre ring and wows the audience. The circus owner/ringmaster (Allan Garcia) auditions The Little Tramp as a clown but discovers he is only funny when he isn't trying. He tricks The Little Tramp into joining the circus as a prop man who wreaks havoc with whatever he does and who unknowingly becomes the star of the show.

Special Features
Region 2

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Customer Reviews

Chaplin's most underrated work...
The Circus was filmed over 80 years ago, but it is still one of the funniest movies ever made. This also might be his most underrated work. "The Gold Rush", "City Lights" etc. get most of the attention, but this film deserves to be considered among those classics. This silent movie was upgraded in the 70's when music and songs were added, but still there's no dialoque. But Chaplin was a master mimic. He could translate wvery human emotion into movements and gestures. That's why this film speaks. This is what you'd call a moving picture. This film is warm and funny. One of those films that I'd take to the deserted island.
If you don't love Chaplin's films, you can't really love movies in general. This film will be watched a hundred years from now, like all the other Chaplin classics. In this time and age, less and less people are familiar with Chaplin's work and that's a shame.

The scene where Chaplin is in the trapeze with the simpanzes is probably the funniest scene in the movies ever. I can only wonder how it was made. It has to be seen to be believed.

What a discovery.....
I stumbled across this film quite by accident - and am so glad I did.

I was sitting in a pub in June, watching the big screen showing Wimbledon Tennis - for some bizarre reason, there was a second screen on another wall, showing "The Circus". As it progressed, I gradually found myself forgetting the tennis altogether, and being completely absorbed in this simple, but elemental laugh-before-you-can-think subtle film. In particular, where he accidentally reveals a magicians trick, and causes chaos, by releasing, doves, rabbits and other assorted paraphanalia, to the hilarity of the circus audience. I laughed so much, I ended up spilling my drink and distracting the other customers.

I vowed to buy it as soon as I could, not understanding how I had missed it before, despite being a Chaplin fan. No wonder it won an Academy Award for Chaplin, and it would win again. Just BUY....

A masterpiece
Until I recently purchased this DVD I had never seen it and I amamazed that such a briliant film could have passed me by. The early scenes in which he completely "ruins" a circus performance have my family, young and old alike, crying with mirth. If Chaplin means anything to you, do not be without this film.