Danish film director Benjamin Christensen is best known for "Witchcraft through the Ages", which he wrote and directed, and in which he played the Devil. It's reliably reported that Christensen had a strong interest in witchcraft and satanism, and he often inserted a satanic atmosphere into films that had no supernatural elements (such as his film version of the mystery novel "Seven Footprints to Satan"). Christensen wrote as well as directed "The Devil's Circus", but it's a derivative story that borrows elements from "He Who Gets Slapped", "Liliom" and "The Big Parade". There's a circus in "The Devil's Circus", but the title is symbolic: it refers partly to war (the devil's playground) but mostly to the Earth and its inhabitants: the human race are the performers in the devil's circus.
"He Who Gets Slapped" begins with a metaphysical clown laughing at the spinning orb of the Earth. "The Devil's Circus" begins with a shot of the Devil (played by Christensen) looming over the Earth, waving his hands and manipulating his fingers above homunculi ... as if he's a puppet-master controlling his marionettes. The film strongly asserts that humans are the playthings of the Devil. There are occasional intercuts to Christensen throughout the film, showing the Devil confounding the plans of his human marionettes.
Petty thief Carl (Charles Emmett Mack, good-looking with angular features) is just out of prison. He gets a job in a circus alongside innocent young Mary (Norma Shearer, basically playing the same role she had played previously in MGM's "He Who Gets Slapped", with a hint of her performance in "The Tower of Lies"). Mary is the trapeze girl, and her beauty attracts the attention of Hugo the lion tamer (John Miljan, an extremely handsome actor who usually played cads). I normally don't like Shearer; here, she's a much better (and prettier) actress than she would be later, when Irving Thalberg weighed her down in elaborate costume dramas. The trapeze sequences in this movie are extremely well-staged from an improbable height; the necessary stunt-doubling and camera tricks are nearly seamless. When Hugo attempts to rape Mary, we see this in cutaways: a close-up of her struggling feet, a shot of his hand extinguishing the lamp.
Carl and Mary fall in love; they want to leave the circus and settle down together, but they've no money. Carl's buddy Spiro (the Jigger Craigin to Carl's Billy Bigelow) persuades Carl that he and Mary can have an honest life if Carl just pulls one more robbery to bankroll them. Thanks to the manipulations of the Devil, Carl gets caught and goes back to gaol. When he finishes his sentence, he's conscripted into the army and sent off into the Great War.
SPOILERS COMING. Hugo's wife Yonna, jealous of his interest in Mary, nobbles one of the guy lines for Mary's trapeze apparatus. During Mary's trapeze act, the line breaks and she falls into the lion cage. Hugo rushes in and saves her from the lions, but Mary is mauled. Meanwhile, Carl is wounded in action. The lovers are reunited anyway. The Devil throws every conceivable obstacle into the path of their happiness, but somehow love is more powerful than the Devil. (Christensen doesn't seem to actually believe this; the movie feels as if a happy ending was mandated by the front office.) The 'happy' ending is deeply cynical. All these tragedies have made Mary lose her belief in God. When Carl discovers that Hugo and Yonna have suffered for their actions, he decides there's a God after all, and he redeems Mary's faith.
The film is quite grim and doomstruck, with some bad comedy relief supplied by Mary's little dog (played by 'Buddy') and another dog. The robbery sequence is excellent; Christensen stages this in long shadows with Carl seen mostly in silhouette. This is very striking, and it helps us maintain sympathy for Carl since we barely *see* him committing the robbery. Carl is meant to be the film's hero, even though he wilfully steals for self-serving reasons. Charles Emmet Mack gives a good performance in a badly-written role. Mack could have had a fine career lasting into the talkie era, but he died in an auto accident during production of "The First Auto" about a year after he made this film.
"The Devil's Circus" is extremely well made, but unsatisfying. Christensen was a talented director whose Hollywood career (like that of several other silent-era European directors) was frustrated by the arrival of sound pictures, which required a fluency in English beyond Christensen's abilities. He went back to Scandinavia, never recapturing his early success.
"He Who Gets Slapped" begins with a metaphysical clown laughing at the spinning orb of the Earth. "The Devil's Circus" begins with a shot of the Devil (played by Christensen) looming over the Earth, waving his hands and manipulating his fingers above homunculi ... as if he's a puppet-master controlling his marionettes. The film strongly asserts that humans are the playthings of the Devil. There are occasional intercuts to Christensen throughout the film, showing the Devil confounding the plans of his human marionettes.
Petty thief Carl (Charles Emmett Mack, good-looking with angular features) is just out of prison. He gets a job in a circus alongside innocent young Mary (Norma Shearer, basically playing the same role she had played previously in MGM's "He Who Gets Slapped", with a hint of her performance in "The Tower of Lies"). Mary is the trapeze girl, and her beauty attracts the attention of Hugo the lion tamer (John Miljan, an extremely handsome actor who usually played cads). I normally don't like Shearer; here, she's a much better (and prettier) actress than she would be later, when Irving Thalberg weighed her down in elaborate costume dramas. The trapeze sequences in this movie are extremely well-staged from an improbable height; the necessary stunt-doubling and camera tricks are nearly seamless. When Hugo attempts to rape Mary, we see this in cutaways: a close-up of her struggling feet, a shot of his hand extinguishing the lamp.
Carl and Mary fall in love; they want to leave the circus and settle down together, but they've no money. Carl's buddy Spiro (the Jigger Craigin to Carl's Billy Bigelow) persuades Carl that he and Mary can have an honest life if Carl just pulls one more robbery to bankroll them. Thanks to the manipulations of the Devil, Carl gets caught and goes back to gaol. When he finishes his sentence, he's conscripted into the army and sent off into the Great War.
SPOILERS COMING. Hugo's wife Yonna, jealous of his interest in Mary, nobbles one of the guy lines for Mary's trapeze apparatus. During Mary's trapeze act, the line breaks and she falls into the lion cage. Hugo rushes in and saves her from the lions, but Mary is mauled. Meanwhile, Carl is wounded in action. The lovers are reunited anyway. The Devil throws every conceivable obstacle into the path of their happiness, but somehow love is more powerful than the Devil. (Christensen doesn't seem to actually believe this; the movie feels as if a happy ending was mandated by the front office.) The 'happy' ending is deeply cynical. All these tragedies have made Mary lose her belief in God. When Carl discovers that Hugo and Yonna have suffered for their actions, he decides there's a God after all, and he redeems Mary's faith.
The film is quite grim and doomstruck, with some bad comedy relief supplied by Mary's little dog (played by 'Buddy') and another dog. The robbery sequence is excellent; Christensen stages this in long shadows with Carl seen mostly in silhouette. This is very striking, and it helps us maintain sympathy for Carl since we barely *see* him committing the robbery. Carl is meant to be the film's hero, even though he wilfully steals for self-serving reasons. Charles Emmet Mack gives a good performance in a badly-written role. Mack could have had a fine career lasting into the talkie era, but he died in an auto accident during production of "The First Auto" about a year after he made this film.
"The Devil's Circus" is extremely well made, but unsatisfying. Christensen was a talented director whose Hollywood career (like that of several other silent-era European directors) was frustrated by the arrival of sound pictures, which required a fluency in English beyond Christensen's abilities. He went back to Scandinavia, never recapturing his early success.