The Devil's Circus (1926) User Reviews

Sinners and saints.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 8 June 2022]

It takes about half an hour of exposition of all the characters before this film is comfortable enough to let the spectacle take over and create some outstanding visuals that are quite stunning, but certainly not seeming like anything you'd see in a circus unless it featured Aimee Semple McPherson in one of her revivals. The story focuses on the sinner, Charles Emmett Mack, who goes out of his way to help the saint, Norma Shearer, a girl down on her luck who was desperately looking for a room and a job.

Cynical Mack thinks she's easy, but must quickly apologize when he realizes the truth about her. Soon they're both working in the circus where she is victimized by lion tamer John Miljan which makes her the target of Carmel Myers, the circus diva and the film vamp. You know she's a vamp by the moment you see her costume, being introduced as if she was the temperamental leading lady in a big Broadway musical.

In fact, as the first circus segment begins, members of the company come out as if they were about to perform a big production number. I have to give this one credit, the first silent film I've watched in years, it got me interested right off because I've never seen Shearer looking so unglamorous, even as Marie Antoinette in her peasant outfits while trying to escape from the palace. The film has a lot of tension and melodrama, as well as surreal segments involving the film's director dressed as the devil.

A bit creaky in the print I saw with just piano accompaniment (which I do prefer over the organ), but interesting nonetheless even though the characters truly are black or white although Mack gets to become more the anti-hero as you get to know him even though he proclaimed early in the film to a priest that anything involved in God is bunk. But he proves himself to be a good guy, not taking advantage of the vulnerable Shearer and obviously opening himself up as their romance blossoms.

Christensen's Hollywood Debut Does Not Yet Warrant Leaving Denmark

[topitimo-829-270459 · 6/10 · 22 October 2019]

Like fellow Scandinavian directors Sweden's Victor Seastrom and Finland's Mauritz Stiller, Denmark's silent pioneer Benjamin Christensen was eventually invited to Hollywood. There he directed seven films, half of which have survived to this day. His first film there was "The Devil's Circus", which like his best Danish work, draws its inspiration both from the religion and the macabre. Yet it puts them to work in a very halfhearted manner, as curiosities or additional spices to the mediocre narrative. The devil is briefly on the screen pulling the strings, but Christensen does not give the audience a full return to his pagan days, but instead delivers America's Christian audiences a safer morale tale.

The film is about an atheist (Charles Emmett Mack), who gets released from jail. He meets a religious girl (Norma Shearer), who has just arrived to the city from the country. She gets the man to put his life together, but he still ends up in jail for a second time. She herself gets a job as a trapeze artist in a circus, where she is sexually assaulted by the lion tamer. The big questions are, will the male protagonist revenge this, and will the main couple end up together?

The narrative is preachy and lacks a realistic feel. The circus sequences are over the top and silly. It's hard to tell what Christensen wanted to do with this film, as many aspects of it feel dictated by the studio heads. Norma Shearer, one of my favorites, did not want to make this film, and does not give one of her better performances in it. Then again the other actors aren't a bit interesting. Based on just his first Hollywood film, Christensen would have been better of staying in Denmark. Or better yet! After Seastrom and Stiller left Sweden, he should have traveled from Copenhagen to Stockholm, to fix the hole in the film industry left by those giants. Now that would have been a smart move.

Superb Silent Classic

[wilm-1 · 10/10 · 13 December 2001]

The Devil's Circus is a beautiful meditation on the vanity and futility of human existence. Its plot is involved and at times borders on the maudlin, but it was made at a time when sentiments such as love and passion could be depicted without the irony and distance that are so necessary for 'serious' movies today. It depicts an individual who loses everything but finds his heart. Many of the scenes are disturbing in their artistic intensity. I was particularly taken by the circus scenes, which remind me of the painting Ensor, a famous Belgian artist whose work predates the movie only by a few years. The movie struck me more as having the aura of nineteenth-century Romanticism, giving it an unreal, spectacular quality. A must for any fan of silent Hollywood, who will find many of the cinema's great traditions anticipated in this fine work. I believe this was MGM's first production, underlining the film's important place in movie history.

Satan needs a rewrite

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 31 August 2002]

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.

An exemplary silent masterwork

[AndyWood-1973 · 10/10 · 20 November 2019]

"The Devil's Circus" (1926) is a remarkable film starring Norma and Charles Emmett Mack.

The title has a double meaning in that a circus theme runs throughout the movie but it seems the Devil's Circus referred to in the title is in fact humanity, with Satan pulling the strings.

The film opens with creepy imagery of Satan (played by the director of the movie, Benjamin Christensen) overlooking feeble humans whilst wriggling his evil fingers and grinning wickedly.

The story begins as young, handsome petty thief Carl (Charles Emmett Mack) is released from prison, vowing to change his ways.

In an attempt to achieve this, the young atheist joins a circus where he meets Mary (Norma Shearer), a beautiful, virginal trapeze artist whom has strong religious beliefs and Christian morals.

Despite their oposingly different religious views, the two find themselves rapidly falling in love with eachother. However, the seedy (if somewhat dashing) lion trainer, Hugo (John Miljan) begins to regularly sexually harrass terrified Mary.

His jealous wife, fellow circus performer Yonner (Carmel Myers) finds the two of them locked in what appears to be a passionate embrace. She is unaware that in actuality, she has walked in on a sexual assault and as such, believes that Mary is the one attempting to steal her husband.

She strikes out at Mary and warns her away from Hugo as the dismayed girl cries silently, taking comfort from her pet dog.

Despite having been warned by a fellow circus employee about Hugo's wiley ways and unhealthy interest in Mary, Carl remains unaware of the true extent of the situation and continues to spend time with his young girlfriend as they make plans for their future.

They both have desires of leaving the circus to start out anew together, but realising that they simply don't have the money to get started, Carl reluctantly decides to join an old criminal pal on a robbery.

The whole thing goes wrong and pursued by the police, he dashes back to Mary to confess his crime and beg her forgiveness. Deeply upset, Mary tells him that if he truly regrets his actions, God will forgive him. Carl informs her that it isn't God he's concened about, but rather her whose forgiveness he desires.

The two lovingly hold eachother tightly as the police arrive and take Carl away in handcuffs.

Sobbing Mary proclaims her undying love as he is carted away, telling him that she will wait for him.

She keeps in touch by letters as Carl serves his term, and the prisoner takes great comfort in knowing that she remains true to her word.

However, things take a very grave turn one night whilst she is in the process of writing to Carl. Hugo enters the petrified young lady's room and proceeds to rape her.

Mary is devastated and abandons the letter, feeling that Carl will no longer wish to be with her following the attack.

As the weeks go by, Carl becomes very distressed in prison as he watches the postal deliveries come and go with no sign of a letter from his beloved.

Back at the circus, Hugo's increasingly jealous wife loses control and during Mary's trapeze act, unties the rope that suspends the trapeze way up high in the big top.

Mary falls from a great height into the lions cage and is mauled by lions. Lion trainer Hugo, despite his evil nature, comes to her rescue and manages to control the big cats with his whip, but Mary is already seriously injured.

The disturbing imagery of Satan returns, grinning over images of trench warfare as 1914 arrives and with it, the Great War.

Exchanging his prison uniform for military attire, Carl is called to the front line where he conducts his duties with a heavy heart and forlorn thoughts of his seemingly lost love, whose old letters he keeps close to his heart at all times.

As time passes by, the now disabled Mary finds herself begging in the streets, selling dolls which she has made in order to survive.

The seemingly endless array of evil things that have happened to her render the once deeply religious girl an atheist.

When Carl is wounded and sent home, he finds Mary and the two are overcome with love and embrace. Mary is deeply touched by the fact that Carl is unperturbed by her requirement of crutches to help her walk and delighted when he speaks of his plans for marriage.

Suddenly, the rape returns to the forefront of her mind and she pushes him away. He begs to know what is wrong with her and with deep regret, she tells him what has happened.

Carl is beside himself with rage and vows to find and kill Hugo. He leaves Mary, distressed and sobbing, and spends the coming days searching the town until he is told where to find the former lion trainer.

When he approaches Hugo, he is confused to find that recognition doesn't register in his enemies face. Slowly, the truth of the situation sinks in and Carl realises that Hugo has also been to war and has been blinded in action.

The sightless, pitiful figure of a man meekly asks Carl what the business of his call is. Carl simply tells him it doesn't matter.

Feeling that all the evils of the past few years have been somehow balanced out, he suddenly finds himself believing in God for the first time in his life.

Returning to Mary, he restores her long lost faith and the two finally begin their lives together with the Devil defeated.

There are some very powerful views expressed in this touching and quite dark story. The direction is startlingly good and there are some wonderful moments of acting from the whole cast.

The rape scene is particularly harrowing, expertly executed by cutaways to Norma's struggling feet, John Miljan's hands grabbing at her and finally his finger switching out the light before proceeding with the vile act.

Young Charles Emmett Mack would surely have gone onto greater things in the coming sound era if he had not succumbed to his art the following year, dying in a tragic car accident whilst driving to the movie set to ironically film a race scene in "The First Auto". He was only 26 years old.

Norma is in fine form, beautifully radiating her emotions and looking entirely adorable in the process.

The trapeze scenes are breathtaking and clever editing makes it impossible to see where Norma and her stunt double's frames switch over.

Simply put, "The Devil's Circus" is one of the finest silent films of the era and a movie which remains with you once you have watched it.