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101
The anger and bitterness aroused by Chaplin's non-participation in the 1914-18 war had not abated when he released Shoulder Arms, and by so doing at once crystallized and justified the public statement he had made of his position.
This film also had a notable set — just trenches; but trenches that ooze from every sandbag, every monstrous mass of clay, every wall sweating moisture, a heavy effluvium of boredom and monotony.
Sunnyside came as an odd completion to this important trilogy. The desolate slum of A Dog's Life, the monstrous trenches of Shoulder Arms give way to an enchanted countryside shimmering under the rays of a magical sun. In spite of its comedy and burlesque, in spite of its half-hearted attempt to satirise a type of pastoral film popular at the time, Sunnyside is unique among all Chaplin's films for its highly developed poetic quality.
These three films, ranging from stark realism to sunlit fantasy, from almost epic sorrow to the most light-hearted gaiety, are a multiple expression of Charlie's complete personality. In them are presented the solitary outcast generated in misery and poverty, despised and rejected of men; the valiant little Greatheart, Don Quixote; and the idealist poet. Linking these manifestations together is our realization that Charlie is more than Charlie, more than Chaplin. Since Chaplin first projected himself in the likeness of Charlie across the screens of the world, Charlie has grown, for all his littleness, to the stature of a Colossus. Genius outstrips its creation; and Charlie, arising directly out of Chaplin's personal saga, served to make that saga universal and eternal until we have, with this trilogy, the representative of all mankind.
The ground now was prepared for The Kid, perhaps the best known and best remembered of Chaplin's earlier films.
The theme of the film — the abandonment of an unwanted child, its reluctant adoption by Charlie, and their hazardous life together until the child, together with Charlie, is restored to his now famous and wealthy mother, is elementary and banal in its facile appeal to the emotions. But Chaplin, employing all his wealth of comedy, tragedy, and pathos, made of it a film of great beauty and tenderness.
As in all his films — and this is one of the factors that put him in a class of his own — the obvious development of the film and its story reveal another and parallel development. The Kid — played so superbly by Jackie Coogan — is clearly another presentation of Charlie, so that we have in this film a dual personality, the adult and the child Charlie, and in both the same heart-catching quality.
The Kid is an extension of A Dog's Life, and the dual presentation of the waif motif increases its desolation, as it increases its comedy.