AllMovie

Celebrated Danish director Benjamin Christensen made his American movie debut with the 1925-26 Norma Shearer vehicle The Devil's Circus. Shearer plays Mary, a circus trapeze artist who is inexorably sucked into the marital travails of lion-tamer Hugo (John Miljan) and his violently jealous wife Yonna (Carmel Myers). When Mary is seduced by Hugo, Yonna causes the girl to suffer a near-fatal accident during a performance. Years later, the now-crippled Mary, reduced to selling toys on a street corner, tells her tale of woe to friendly pickpocket Carlstop (Charles Emmet Mack), who has fallen in love with her. Hoping to avenge Mary, Carlstop tracks down Hugo and Yonna, only to find that Fate has beaten him to the punch: Hugo is now hopelessly blind, while Yonna is a bedraggled prostitute.