Shoulder Arms (1918)

Chaplin prepares to go over the top

Another year, another Chaplin film.  This time it is Shoulder Arms, which puts Chaplin in the U.S. Army fighting during World War I.  After a brief intro of Charlie as an inept private during boot camp, we leap to his arrival at the trenches of Europe.  We follow our hero through a series of vignettes as he dons a gas mask and attacks the enemy with limberger cheese, single-handedly surrounds a dozen enemy soldiers and ultimately captures the kaiser.  Along the way he demonstrates loyalty, ingenuity and sheer audacity in his approach to war.  But how could this inept private mold himself into a model soldier?

Shoulder Arms manages one of the trickiest thematic juggling acts I have ever seen on screen.  Chaplin simultaneously gives us a propaganda film, a look into the monotony of a soldier's life on the battlefield and a great comedy.  The German soldiers are completely inept throughout and Charlie always has the upper hand.  He manages to find the comedy in the U.S. trenches without ever making fun of the soldiers.  The only critique I have is that the movie seems to build to the middle section while the final resolution of the tale is not particularly thrilling or funny in comparison.

That is a minor quibble. This has one of the funniest, most effective visual gags I have seen with Chaplin disguising himself as a tree to infiltrate enemy lines.  There are moments when you absolutely cannot spot the disguised hero and the camouflage is completely effective.  At one point, they show you where he hides, cut away for a moment and he is almost impossible to spot when the camera returns.


Beyond this, there is the aforementioned Limburger cheese gag as well as a sequence in which the trench floods and Chaplin must sleep in a bed that is a foot underwater.  He manages to show the travails of the soldier without ever minimizing the hardships the men endured.  Brilliant.

Another great aspect of the movie: my 8-year-old watched over half of it with me and there was a lot of laughter.  He loved the tree disguise.  There's an extended cat-and-mouse game in a bombed out home that he also laughed throughout.  It's fun to introduce these movies to the younger set.

The recurring theme for my Chaplin experience thus far?  This movie is better than his previous ones.  It's great fun to continue to watch him grow and improve as an artist.  Definitely recommend.

Watched on IMDB
Photo from Clown Ministry