El fresco de las trincheras

Syd Chaplin is Bruce Bairnsfather's cartoon creation to the life in this, the second screen adaptation of the play he wrote with Arthur Elliot in 1917. Aged only 41, Charlie Chaplin's elder brother Syd looks twenty years older as the laconic army veteran who even for a silent film says very little. Although frequently called upon to show great athletic prowess (it comes as no surprise when he turns out to be able to pick up a piano in one hand), Chaplin remains for the most part quietly inscrutable behind that enormous moustache that makes it difficult to see where his mouth is, but for the pipe usually sticking out of it.

Although there is quite a lot of plot, the film for the most part comprises a series of comic episodes, some of them quite surreal, such as the lengthy sequence in which Bill and little Alphie get drunk while careering around terrorising Germans dressed as a pantomime horse... No, really! (Contrary to the late F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's earlier declaration, by the way, the Kennedy brothers do share the screen together in a play staged for the troops: Tom as a blacksmith shielding his daughter from a nasty Hun played by Edgar). Great fun, handsomely produced.