The Circus

Part 1

Part 2

Around 3:25 minutes into the first section, Chaplin begins playing with one of his most famous themes: the Tramp, aimlessly wandering around the outskirts of some field of action (namely a Circus, established in the film’s first sequence), by some stroke of absolute chance gets pulled into this apparatus (another paradigmatic Chaplin theme–a robbery that while not of his own doing, is still much appreciated).

The genius is not in the hilarity or ingenuity with which the Tramp attempts to escape this situation, but how, in his accidental insertion into this field of action, he plays with its rules. The rules of the game are, in the beginning, unknown to the Tramp. But gradually, coming up against the limits of the apparatus (the circus) and transcending them, the Tramp mimetically replaces and becomes the rules of the game. Benjamin: “An action performed in a film studio therefore differs from the corresponding real action the way the competitive throwing of a discus in a sports arena would differ from the throwing of the same discus from the same spot in the same direction in order to kill someone. The first is a test performance, while the second is not. Film makes test performances capable of being exhibited, by turning that ability itself into a test” (Selected Works 3, 111).