High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Circus is a 1928 silent film written and directed by Charlie Chaplin with Joseph Plunkett as an uncredited writer. The film stars Chaplin, Al Ernest Garcia, Merna Kennedy, Harry Crocker, George Davis and Henry Bergman. The ringmaster of an impoverished circus hires Chaplin`s Little Tramp as a clown, but discovers that he can only be funny unintentionally, not on purpose.