“[…] 1928: another film about circus. After the big success of Dupont’s Variété in the United States, a smell of exploitation and vulgar calculation are in the air. The reduction of these films to a simple sentimental melodramatic triangle makes it sterile. They don’t even succeed into telling something new about the artistic environment of the action. When A girl in every port did impress the Parisians in 1929 and, according to Langlois, did drive them away from the expressionism, the artistic environment did not prevent them from the discovery of modernity, Louise Brooks included. Jenny Jugo in Looping the loop is like Louise Brooks, one of these girls of the “new objectivity” who were taking the place of the expressionist actresses with their unreal names: Lya de Putti, Pola Negri, Lil Dagover. […]

With Werner Krauss in the role of a clown, antagonist of an active character, this film gives life to a paradoxe that the Berlin audience, for whom Krauss is above all a theater actor, would have understood with pleisure: out of his essential element, the words, he is reduced to his only body who is hidden in the large shoes of the clown, while his mimic is masked by a thick grease-paint. What is left of the expressionism? His made-up eyes are quite irritating: as the representation of the specular images of Robison which is quite rude for the spectator’s perception. […]

To lift the comedy to the gag: that’s the style of Robison. The film begins with the dramatic image of the clown’s double face and ends on the legs of a united couple in the happy end, on his large shoes and her fine argent ballet shoes, while the little satisfied vagabond executes a somersault.

For a director born in Chicago, it is natural to end his film on a loop.

(Frieda Grafe, Cinegrafie, n.7)

“Berlin Nov. 1. Unquestionabily the best film Ufa has turned out this season. If it were not for certain weaknesses in the story it would have chances of duplicating Variety’s International success.

Fine, however, is the performance of Werner Krauss as the clown. This is one of the greatest impersonations ever flashed on a screen and may be sufficient to put the picture over in America. Karl Hoffmann’s photography was full of ideas and Arthur Robison’s direction adequate”. (Trask, Variety , 14.11.1928)

“Krauss is ‘way off form in Looping the loop. Role probably too soft. If wishing to succeed Jannings over there, this one won’t help him at all.No credit to the director, photographer or author. Either they asked to be out or were forgotten in translation. Trick shots and dissolves are in abundance, though little new German technique. Before the sound vogue on Broadway, this foreign made might have chanced a week on that street. But it’s silent and not strong enough to now stand the big street gaff, and that tells its story”.

(Bige, Variety, 13.2.1929)