Sirkus

Charlie Chaplin in a hilarious silent comedy featuring magic tricks and slack-wire acrobatics.

We find ourselves at a circus struggling to attract an audience. The clown isn’t funny, and the other acts aren’t much to write home about either. A hungry, curious tramp arrives. The police are on his trail because of a misunderstanding involving a stolen sketchbook. The chase leads the tramp and the police straight into the circus ring, to the audience’s great applause. They think it is all part of the act, and the tramp mistakenly becomes the star of the show.

Sirkus is a remarkable and often underrated Chaplin film. Its production was turbulent. Among other things, Chaplin suffered a nervous breakdown in the wake of his divorce from Lita Grey, which was covered sensationally by the scandal press. Chaplin fled to New York and disappeared for over a year in the middle of filming. Yet the result is a brilliant film—a hilarious comedy with brilliant gags that have often been quoted in later films.

Our regular silent-film pianist Kjetil Schjander Luhr plays live piano music to accompany the film.