He Who Gets Slapped

A tragic silent melodrama about humiliation, lost love, and the transformation of pain into spectacle, set against the surreal backdrop of a circus.

After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.