Analysis
Film historian Jeffrey Vance views The Circus as an autobiographical metaphor:
He joins the circus and revolutionizes the cheap little knockabout comedy among the circus clowns, and becomes an enormous star. But by the end of the movie, the circus is packing up and moving on without him. Chaplin's left alone in the empty circus ring...It reminds me of Chaplin and his place in the world of the cinema. The show is moving on without him. He filmed that sequence four days after the release of 'The Jazz Singer' (the first successful talkie) in New York. When he put a score to 'The Circus' in 1928, Chaplin scored that sequence with 'Blue Skies,' the song Jolson had made famous, only Chaplin played it slowly and sorrowfully, like a funeral dirge.
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