Shoulder Arms (1918)

Too much of everything

Thanks for the memories!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's really amazing, how timeless this movie is. This is the first Chaplin movie that I saw (and I intend to watch more), I was blown away to how funny it still is, with already 100 years-old! I think that this is probably the main characteristic of a classic (or a masterpiece), it's a movie that doesn't matter when you see it, it stills good. And Shoulder Arms is definitely one of those cases.The humor here is silly, but at the same time is also really clever, and this is my favorite aspect of it. At the end, is hard to judge something that old, I really don't have a clear path in mind of how to rate something like that, so I don't know, I might be being unfair or overvaluing it, so, anyway, you really must see it, in order to see what is your opinion about it.Probably the only thing that bother me sometimes was the score, it repeats a lot, but, again, I get all the scenario behind the production (age, technology).In short, I think that Shoulder Arms is a classic, timeless, and Chaplin is definitely one of the most influential people in film story, if you see guys like Johnny Depp out there today and likes it, you had to thanks Charlie for that.

I'm going to get straight to the plot with this film. Private Charlie Doughboy (Charlie Chaplin) is in boot camp in the US Army. Then he is sent to the Western Front in France. From there it's normal trench life. Until his platoon goes across no mans land and captures the German trench. From there Private Doughboy goes on an adventure. Disguised as a tree he saves a fellow soldier (Syd Chaplin) from being executed. Then he meets a girl (Edna Purviance) who ran an inn that was destroyed from artillery fire. Purviance is arrested and taken to a German officer but Private Doughboy saves her again and his comrade from earlier and even takes Kaiser Whilhelm (Syd Chaplin) prisoner. And then as it turns out it was all a dream. Although this was not the most correct representation of the trenches as they were way too clean in this film I still find it to be very enjoyable. I say go see this one.

One of the prices of superstardom is that you have to become adaptable. When the US joined the World War in 1917 Charlie Chaplin was at the height of his popularity. Naturally, he was expected to make some sort of contribution. Chaplin had already set his short films in all sorts of locations, even at different time periods, and had given his little tramp all manner of occupations, so soldiering in the trenches shouldn't have been too big a step. However, Shoulder Arms is, if not a propaganda piece (it was released a bit late for that), at least one that had to have a certain outlook. As a result Chaplin was constrained somewhat, and it shows.The first half of the picture, which is set during Charlie's training and among his comrades in the trench seems a little muted compared to other Chaplin pictures of this period. The reason for this is clear – it wouldn't have had the right effect if there were seen to be too much antagonism between soldiers. Characters like the burly drill sergeant or Charlie's buddy (played his brother Syd) would make ideal bugbears in any other picture, but here all we get is a bit of appropriately brotherly tussling between Charlie and Syd. When you see how weak these opening ten minutes are you realise how much of Chaplin's comedy depended upon playing off others and pricking pomposity.Fortunately, Chaplin gets to make up for all this when his little tramp goes out to face the German foe. Here he can go all out with making his enemies look ridiculous, getting the most out of his varyingly-sized supporting players. We have Henry Bergman as a roly-poly German, Albert Austin as a gangly one, and best of all Loyal Underwood as a short but self-important German officer. This is Underwood's finest moment, and he really puts a lot of energy and spirit into the part. And Chaplin gets to set up some great routines, with some ingenious ways of defeating foes, not to mention one of his best ever entrances when he appears out of the landscape in his tree disguise.And Chaplin was clearly savvy enough to realise that the beginning of the picture contained some fairly poor material. Consequently he edits in a handful of shots of antics in the German trench (with Underwood at his most animated), which serve as nothing more than a little touch of uproar, and a promise of things to come.And now we must have that all-important statistic – Number of kicks up the arse: 7 (1 for, 0 against, 6 other)

Pretty funny stuff. Charlie was still working towards his peak when he made this rather daring short about soldiers in the trenches of World War One. Daring because, after all, the war was still going on and this was a comedy about a serious business.The gags are amusing without being either hilarious or tear jerking. One successful scene follows another, as Chaplin and his comrades try to sleep in a bunker that is knee deep in water. (That's where we got the term "trench foot" from.) Probably the most ludicrous episode has Chaplin disguised as a tree and foiling any number of German soldiers as they try to execute an Allied soldier caught behind the lines. Edna Purviance, Chaplin's main squeeze at the time, is a woman who cooperates with the Americans and is saved from execution too.Chaplin would go on to do funnier and more ambitious things but this is better than most of his shorts during this early period.