SHOULDER ARMS
starring Charlie Chaplin
MOTION PICTURE
January, 1919
"Shoulder Arms starts off with a fusillade of comicalities and ends with a bombardment of mirth-provoking tricks. Charles Spencer Chaplin, serious-faced, wide-eyed, drills, marches, trips, dodges thru all the customary episodes of a war drama, but in turning what has been done so often as drama into farce, he has struck a note that is almost more human than the blood and thunder warplays. We laugh at his awkwardness at drill, at his plight in the mud-filled trenches, at his method of scratching imaginary cooties on a nutmeg grater, at his predicament when all the boxes come from home and he receives none, and we double up painfully with guffaws of mirthfulness when he camouflages himself as a tree and battles the bewildered Germans, but underneath all the farce of it, we are in close sympathy with the little man and conscious of a touch of true pathos which makes us realize that this Chaplin who calls himself a comedian is perhaps the greatest (a word I dislike to use but which seems necessary in this case) actor on the screen today. Truly, with each release does he prove the value of his policy of making only a few pictures a year. Not only is the perfection of three months' work apparent as compared to the three weeks expended upon other feature films, but the public does not have an opportunity to become satiated with the star. With each successive Chaplin picture the verdict is, the best thing he has ever done, which, I believe, can be said of no other actor on the screen.
Video source: Movies Unlimited, Facets