The Circus

The Chaplin film that Chaplin himself tried to forget — and one of his most purely entertaining. The Little Tramp, fleeing the police, stumbles into a circus tent and accidentally becomes the star of the show, his panicked attempts to escape funnier than anything the professional clowns can manage. When he falls in love with the bareback rider (Merna Kennedy), his happiness evaporates: she loves the handsome new tightrope walker instead. Chaplin's behind-the-scenes struggles during production were legendary — a bitter divorce, a studio fire, a year's halt — and perhaps that's why he omitted the film from his autobiography. But the work itself is pure magic: the lion cage sequence alone is worth the price of admission, and the bittersweet ending, with the Tramp watching the circus move on without him, is among his most quietly devastating.