Chaplin tries a change of pace in this film and features himself as a tired flea circus performer who beds down for the night in a flophouse. The flophouse curiously looks similar to the one later featured in The Kid with Jackie Coogan. The film was never completed, and I wonder about the particular reason for that. Perhaps it's mentioned in his autobiography or other biographies written about him. I suspect it might have something to do with the idea that Chaplin simply felt the public wouldn't readily accept him in the persona of an older man. Not much happens in the film except the predictable occurrences of some of Chaplin's bunk-mates getting infested with the fleas. Chaplin coaxes the fleas back into a box in his inimitable fashion, and eventually he decides to take his flea circus with him and go somewhere else. It's an interesting curio at most and nothing more, but Chaplin did resurrect the idea of a flea circus decades later in Limelight. ** of 4 stars.
Review of The Professor
