After a showing of The Circus. Chaplin never allows the audience to smile while watching him. They must either double up laughing or be very sad. Chaplin greets people by taking off his bowler, and it looks like the lid rising from the kettle when the water boils over. His clothes are impermeable to every blow of fate. He looks like a man who hasn’t taken his clothes off for a month. He is unfamiliar with beds; when he lies down, he does so in a wheelbarrow or on a seesaw. Wet trough, sweaty, in clothes far too small for him, Chaplin is the living embodiment of Goethe’s aperçu: Man would not be the noblest creature on earth if he were not too noble for it. This film is the first film of Chaplin’s old age. He has grown older since his last films, but he also acts old. And the most moving thing about this new film is the feeling that he now has a clear overview of the possibilities open to him, and that he is resolved to work exclusively within these limits to attain his goal. At every point the variations on his greatest themes are displayed in their full glory. The chase is set in a maze; his unexpected appearance would astonish a magician; the mask of non-involvement turns him into a fairground marionette. The most wonderful part is the way the end of the film is structured. He strews confetti over the happy couple, and you think: This must be the end. Then you see him standing there when the circus procession starts off; he shuts the door behind everyone, and you think: This must be the end. Then you see him stuck in the rut of the circle earlier drawn by poverty, and you think: This must be the end. Then you see a close-up of his completely bedraggled form, sitting on a stone in the arena. Here you think the end is absolutely unavoidable, but then he gets up and you see him from behind, walking further and further away, with that gait peculiar to Charlie Chaplin; he is his own walking trademark, just like the company trademark you see at the end of other films. And now, at the only point where there’s no break and you’d like to be able to follow him with your gaze forever – the film ends!

Fragment written in 1928 or early 1929; unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime, from Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1927-1934, The Belknap Press / Harvard University Press, Cambridge / London 1999