A big evening of movies about the big top begins with one of the first – and still best – films of that genre. It’s Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 silent comedy The Circus, in which his character of the Little Tramp wanders into a circus tent and becomes a comedy sensation. But he gets laughs only when he’s not trying to, and falls flat otherwise. It’s a very knowing approach to comedy, and the characters – and if you think capuchin monkeys were discovered as scene-stealing simian cinema stars in The Hangover, think again. Chaplin, as with so many other things comedic, got there first.