I saw this at the Pine Drive-In years ago with my family on a double-bill with "Paint Your Wagon."
"The Circus": Chaplin's little-known masterpiece:
"Bring on the funny man!" howls the audience in Charlie Chaplin's 1928 "The Circus," as they jeer the mediocre, worn-out clowns at the eponymous second-rate circus. (We don't hear them say it, mind you; that's what it says in the intertitle.) The funny man can't hear them. He's outside, asleep in an abandoned donkey cart. It's Chaplin's iconic Tramp character, of course, and he doesn't know he's a big hit, or that he's funny at all. He blundered into the circus ring while running away from the cops, after being framed by a pickpocket for his crime -- producing a chase sequence that's among the most delirious, and hilarious, of Chaplin's career.
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