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)
