The recent reappearance of Chaplin's The Circus [1928] provides an example of a rich film which has been overshadowed by its predecessor (The Gold Rush, 1925) and its successor (City Lights, 1931). True, The Circus lacks the superb economy of The Gold Rush and it does not plumb to the depths of pathos of City Lights. But its virtues are rather special, and, I think, ones which we, forty years later, are in a special position to notice. For The Circus is one of the few films in which Chaplin's nineteenth-century sensibility deals symbolically with art and despair in a truly twentieth-century way.

It is a commonplace that the conemporary cinema has begun to comment on art as well as life; in Lola Montes, 8 1/2, Persona, and Blow-Up, we see directors exploring the nature of cinema itself. In the light of this tendency, The Circus seems highly modern.

Perhaps Chaplin's most objective...