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Without any bombast, flag-waving, or stimulation of hatreds, "Shoulder Arms," although a comedy, provides a truer picture of World War I — thanks to Chaplin's sharp observation and oblique approach — than more ambitious "epics" of the period. It is Everyman at war and, in the words of Jean Cocteau, "It moves like a drumroll."
After the realistic opening, the irony and satire sharpen. Touches of fantasy are introduced: the underwater berths in the trench; the use of the enemy's marksmen to open bottles, by holding them up as targets; the opening and closing of a door that stands in a diswalled ruin; etc. Gradually the fantasy intensifies pushing credulity to the limit, to parallel the insanity of war — pushes until the bubble bursts.
Its scenes became the talk of the time. Few pictures before or since have been so widely discussed so that even people who missed the film were acquainted with its major episodes. Particularly talked about were the sequence in the flooded trench; the business with the limburger-cheese "grenade"; Chaplin's vicarious enjoyment, over a comrade's shoulder, of a letter from home; the tree-camouflage sequence; the simple and eloquent "Poor France" scene of the dejected girl in the doorway of her ruined home; the stars-and-stripes pantomimed by which Charlie identified himself to the girl; and the fantastic capture of the Kaiser. The picture influenced many other films. The mail scene, with its genuine pathos, was borrowed direct in "The Big Parade" of 1925.
Technically, too, the picture was an advance over Chaplin's previous work. As in "A Dog's Life" lights are sometimes used for effects, not merely for illumination on dark days. There are advances in cutting, double exposure by split screen, iris effects, etc.
Five reels were planned but the picture was cut down to three. Existing stills indicate the elimination of sequences showing Chaplin as a family man with three