 |
| Charles Chaplin: Shoulder Arms (US 1918). In his dreams, Chaplin is a war hero who defeats Germany, including the Kaiser, single-handedly. Among the Germans raising their hands up: Henry Bergman (below Chaplin) and Albert Austin (in the foreground). |
Charlot soldato / Kivääri olalle vie! / På axel gevär.
US 1918.
Dir: Charlie Chaplin. photog: Roland “Rollie” Totheroh.
Cast: Charlie Chaplin (American soldier), Edna Purviance (French farmhouse girl), Sydney Chaplin (soldier comrade; Kaiser), Loyal Underwood (small German officer), Tiny Ward (giant German soldier), Edward Sutherland (soldier reading letter), Tom Wilson (drill instructor; German soldier), Jack Wilson (Crown Prince), Henry Bergman, Albert Austin, Alva D. Blake (various American and German soldiers).
Prod: Charles Chaplin / First National Pictures.
Première: 20.10.1918 (New York).
Copy: DCP, 42'41" (from 35 mm, 20 fps).
Source: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Restored 2025. Special thanks to George Eastman Museum, Danish Film Institute, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre, Bruce Lawton, Metropolis Post, Molten Lava Film Design, Association Chaplin
Finnish premiere: 23 Dec 1929.
44th Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: The Chaplin Connection.
Grand piano: Daan van den Hurk. Based on the 1959 score by Charles Chaplin.
Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in English / Italian, 10 Oct 2025
Dave Kehr (GCM 2025): "Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms stands as cinema’s first service comedy, a revolutionary departure from the grim propaganda films saturating theatres in late 1918. While audiences endured lurid melodramas with titles like The Prussian Cur and The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin, Chaplin offered a comic vision grounded in the recognizable experience of an average enlisted man rather than demonized enemies. Premiered three weeks before the Armistice, this audacious satire transformed potential controversy into universal acclaim by presenting warfare through the lens of shared human absurdity rather than nationalistic fervor. Its influence would prove enduring, establishing a template for military comedy that extended from Abbott and Costello’s Buck Privates through to Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H."
"The film emerged from Chaplin’s lucrative First National contract, which afforded him unprecedented creative control. Working with military consultant Corporal O. W. De Varila – who fired the first U.S. artillery shot in France – Chaplin achieved authentic detail in his Hollywood backlot trenches.
"Released during the catastrophic intersection of World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic, Shoulder Arms provided desperately needed comic relief to traumatized audiences."
"The film’s success in packed theatres – despite public health restrictions – testified to Chaplin’s extraordinary cultural standing and the public’s hunger for cathartic laughter. Trade publications noted the remarkable phenomenon of audiences “taking their lives in their hands” to witness Chaplin’s war dream, making it the top-performing comedy of 1918."
"The film’s enduring power derives from Chaplin’s transformation of the Little Tramp into the archetypal “everyman soldier.” Through brilliantly choreographed sequences – the cheese grater used to scratch imaginary lice, the tree disguise for enemy infiltration, the gramophone horn serving as an underwater breathing tube – Chaplin created a visual vocabulary for military absurdity that resonates across cultures and generations."
"For decades, audiences have watched versions derived from Chaplin’s back-up camera angles and second-choice takes, assembled from degraded C and D negatives after the original A negative deteriorated beyond use. MoMA’s meticulous reconstruction, assembled primarily from surviving prints based on the original A-negative material, reveals an essentially unknown Chaplin film – the version American audiences experienced in 1918."
"The restoration corrects decades of technical distortion, eliminating the jerky motion caused by stretch-printing for sound-era projectors and returning the film to its original 20 frames per second. Subtle but significant variations emerge: camera movements proceed in opposite directions, Chaplin’s performance carries different emotional inflections, and the film’s rhythm reflects Chaplin’s true creative intentions rather than technical compromises." – Dave Kehr
AA: The restored Shoulder Arms was the greatest film I saw at the 2025 Giornate. Familiar and unfamiliar, I have enjoyed and revered this movie since 1983 when I first saw it. That is when I experienced my first full Chaplin First National epiphany (the immortal trio A Dog's Life, Shoulder Arms and The Pilgrim, and the worthy quartet Sunnyside, A Day's Pleasure, The Idle Class and The Pay Day). Step by step Chaplin reached new heights from the 1914 Keystone apprenticeship to the 1915 Essanay ambition to the 1916 Mutual mastery. At First National, in 1918, independent at last, Chaplin fully blossomed as a master of comedy – of the cinema – of modern art.
Famously, Chaplin proved that comedy is at its most powerful when it borders on tragedy. It is also well-known that no audience welcomed his film more warmly than the men at war.
Many gags I remembered. Now I enjoyed rediscovering the mail sequence where Charlie, the only soldier who gets no mail, reads the letter over a comrade's (Edward Sutherland) shoulder and empathizes with it more than the recipient himself. The camouflage sequence with Charlie as a tree is uncanny in its bizarre identification.
STARK REDUCTION. The film impresses with the charge of the reduced mise-en-scène.
EXISTENTIAL FEAR. The fear of death is omnipresent. We are in Purgatory, perhaps in Hades already.
THE ABSURDITY OF THE DRILL EXERCISES. Drill exercises as such are close to farce. Chaplin's exaggerations are subtle and assured.
THE TRAMP AS A SOLDIER. The Tramp, the outsider, in the ultimate casting against type as a soldier.
THE ANTI-HERO. Chaplin the consummate acrobat and ballet dancer plays the world's clumsiest soldier: bow-legged, lacking balance and coordination.
SOLITUDE. Everyone else gets mail and food packages, Charlie merely rock hard crackers and cheese good only as a stink bomb.
HUNGER. No comedian understands hunger like Chaplin in Shoulder Arms and The Gold Rush.
EDNA LIGHTS UP THE SCREEN. In the ruins that used to be her home, we meet Edna Purviance, a reminder of love and tenderness, the meaning of life.
JOY. Writing about wartime Finland, Professor Matti Kuusi wrote that "nothing was more important than joy". Close to death, you don't want sad songs. Joy is the best medicine.
...
WORLD WAR I AND THE ARTS. World War I took glory away from war once and for all. The industrial scale of the slaughter was unheard of. In the aftermath, a profound disillusionment about mankind came about. This disillusionment and the experience of the "lost generation" were fundamental in the genesis of modern art. A break with the past was epochal.
Laughter and slaughter. Chaplin never trivializes. The sense of war and death is serious and apocalyptic. Nobody had tried a comedy like this before. Few have attempted later (Chaplin himself in The Great Dictator and Ernst Lubitsch in To Be Or Not To Be).
THE MUSIC. Daan van den Hurk played an interpretation of Charles Chaplin's 1959 score very well. The music evokes the irrepressible spirit of the hapless soldier. It is amusingly out of touch with the horrors of the war.
THE RESTORATION. In the 2025 MoMA restoration, smoothness of movement and integrity of the best performances has been reinstated for the first time in generations. As for visual quality, the copy screened had a compilation character.
No comments:
Post a Comment