Brian Z. watched a Spanish film entitled THE LAST CIRCUS. I asked with some eagerness whether there were any sad clowns in it, to which he replied, "YES! A sad clown and a funny clown are engaged in a murderous rivalry that is also some kind of political allegory." Well, I don't know, Brian Z. Once I see the phrase "murderous rivalry," I start to feel that we have strayed over into "scary clown" territory, and you know how I feel about that. Not good! I looked up THE LAST CIRCUS on imdb and found that the original title is BALADA TRISTE DE TROMPETA, which if my extremely limited linguistic talent is not failing me, I believe means "sad ballad of a trumpet" or something. There's one thing you can always count on: sad or scary, clowns LOVE their trumpets! Here we have LA STRADA, the saddest and most clownish example, though Ms. Mesina does not appear in her clown makeup in this scene:
