He Who Gets Slapped

Victor Sjostrom - 1924
It is difficult not to think of 'The Blue Angel' here. Sjostrom certainly attacks the idea of alughter as a palliative, it rather seems an aspect of horror here; this is not on the surface a funny film at all. Keeping the nature of the plot nice and unspecific lets us project our own situation onto the film.
The whites of the face form a powerful view, quickly cut here with quite a lot of tight views. There is some great 180' degree switching of view, quite a few eyeline matches. Some of my favourite shots were the geometrical ones of the crowd, and how they morph into the clowns, the fade to that.
There is some harsh stuff as we move from face to face of, frankly, idiots; a curious sort of disgustingness, degradation. This is what this film is about; knowing you have degraded yourself, not knowing it, physical violence.