The Circus Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The Circus Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov February 23, 2011

Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus" (1928) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Park Circus. The supplemental features on the disc include an introduction by Chaplin biographer David Robinson; outtakes; documentary featuring filmmaker Emir Kusturica; and photo gallery. Region-B "locked".

What a show!

Falsely accused of being a pickpocket, the Tramp runs from the police and hides in a traveling circus. While a persistent cop chases him around, he disrupts a number of different acts and impresses the audience. The circus owner (Al Ernest Garcia, City Lights, Modern Times) immediately recognizes his talent and offers him a job as a property man (!)

Time passes by and the Tramp becomes known as the Funny Man. Because of him, the circus owner makes a ton of money. Realizing that the Tramp is not justly rewarded for his work, the circus owner’s beautiful stepdaughter (Merna Kennedy, Embarrassing Moments, The Gay Buckaroo) encourages him to demand that he is paid fairly. But the Tramp misinterprets her words and instead falls madly in love with her. Later on, when the Tramp overhears a fortune teller telling the stepdaughter that she is going to marry a tall, dark and handsome man, he concludes that they are meant to be together.

Much to the Tramp’s disappointment, however, a handsome tight-rope walker (Harry Crocker, South Sea Love) joins the circus and immediately steals the stepdaughter's heart. The two begin spending time together, and the Tramp finally realizes that she was never in love with him. He becomes so disillusioned that eventually loses his ability to be funny.

Like most of Chaplin’s films, The Circus blends comedy and drama exceptionally well. The Tramp’s relationship with the circus owner's stepdaughter is simple and naive, but at the same time quite touching. The way he looks at her before she meets the tight-rope walker really is quite extraordinary - there is so much admiration, hope and love in his eyes. Then later on when she breaks the Tramp’s heart, there is an entirely new set of emotions on display. He looks enormously hurt, disillusioned and sad.

There is a good dose of sentimentality in the film, but there is a great deal of seriousness as well. Obviously, The Circus is not as far reaching as Modern Times and The Great Dictator, but there are still quite a few effective jabs at modernity in it.

The Circus contains some of Chaplin’s best improvisations - the hall-of-mirrors sequence; the chase sequence inside the circus that attracts the attention of the owner; the wire-walking sequence with the monkeys playing with the Tramp. Chaplin spent hundreds of thousands of hours preparing and filming them to make sure that they are as good as they could possibly be.

Even though The Circus won Chaplin’s first Academy Award - for versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus - for years he ignored it. In the late 1960s, however, he finally returned to The Circus to record a new music score for its rerelease. A title song, "Swing Little Girl", was also composed, and though a professional singer was hired to perform it, Chaplin sang it.

Note: The Circus proved an incredibly difficult film to complete. While Chaplin was working on it, his mother passed away, his studio burnt down, and the IRS claimed that he owned $1 million in back taxes.

The Circus Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Charlie Chaplin's The Circus arrives on blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Park Circus.

Anyone with a larger than 50' screen should immediately be able to tell that there are obvious improvements in terms of detail, clarity, contrast, and color reproduction; frankly, the image simply does not break up as much as it does on the DVD release of The Circus. As it was the case with The Kid and City Lights, however, there are various inherited limitations -- minor scratches, a few vertical lines, problematic frame transitions, a few warps, etc. Various noise corrections have been applied as well. Some are stronger than others, but some light grain is definitely easy to spot. There also seems to be some sporadic sharpening, though it is never overly distracting. Aside from the obviously inherited frame skips, there are no serious stability issues. All in all, there appears to be some room for improvement here, but only in terms of fine tuning. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray disc. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

The Circus Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two audio tracks on this Blu-ray disc: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and English LPCM 2.0. Obviously, the film contains English intertitles.

The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is strong. It has a surprisingly good dynamic amplitude, which gives the winds a much better presence. Feel free to experiment with the English LPCM 2.0 track, though. For the record, I did not detect any disturbing pops or audio dropouts while viewing the film.

The Circus Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Note: All of the supplemental features are placed on a separate DVD. They are encoded in PAL.

• Introduction by David Robinson - a short introduction to The Circus by the Chaplin biographer in which he quickly notes a few interesting facts from the film's fascinating history. In English, not subtitled. (6 min).

• Chaplin Today: The Circus - an informative documentary focusing on Chaplin's career and legacy featuring filmmaker Emir Kusturica (Underground; Black Cat, White Cat). In English, not subtitled. (27 min).

• Outtakes - No audio. (27 min.)

• Photo Gallery - a collection of stills from the film.

The Circus Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Often ignored, The Circus is one of Chaplin's most inventive films. Let's hope that eventually there will be a North American Blu-ray release of it. In the meantime, take a look at this British release. I think that it is very attractively priced and well worth owning. RECOMMENDED.