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MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

theowinthrop This film as it is now is far shorter than it was when released in 1918. In fact, it is now more available with two other medium sized silent Chaplin features (A DOG'S LIFE, and THE PILGRIM) that Chaplin re-released in the 1950s. In it's day SHOULDER ARMS was a big hit because of it's humor in uniform approach. It still is very funny (Chaplin in disguise as a tree, spying on the Germans, is so ridiculous it's hysterical), but it suffers from being set in it's own age. Charlie's dealing with World War I, a hideous conflict that killed 20 million people, but not the worst war (horrible to say) of the 20th Century. Chaplin would live to see that war too, and would spoof it's main architects in THE GREAT DICTATOR. But the latter is more accessible to modern audiences because that movie is a talking picture. Also, Hitler as a target seems more important to audiences in 2008 than Kaiser Wilhelm II and his general staff.SHOULDER ARMS was to take us through the drafting of the tramp, his training, his getting use to trench warfare, and his actual fighting against the "Huns" on the Western Front. Much of this is now gone - one segment (when Albert Austin is a Doctor examining Chaplin in his office at the draft center) is still in existence and was shown completely in the documentary UNKNOWN CHAPLIN. This is unfortunate, because the film is now roughly forty five minutes long, and there seems to be gaps that these scenes filled out. What remains is first rate but one leaves wanting more...and feeling a trifle cheated.Sydney Chaplin and Henry Bergman do well in supporting parts, especially Sydney as Wilhelm. He had done it before in a short with Charlie for the sale of bonds, giving a militaristic speech before being clobbered by the tramp with a huge hammer labeled "War Bonds"). Here we see the tramp succeed in capturing Wilhelm and the general staff at the conclusion. It was only topped by Stan and Ollie capturing the German army with a tank and barbed wire in PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES.The funny thing is that Chaplin actually had a major crisis as a result of his wartime activities. He was not a naturalized American - not in 1917 or in 1952, when Attorney General McGranery publicly announced that Chaplin could not return to the U.S. because he was an enemy alien (Chaplin and his family were in Europe on a trip - in anger Charlie settled in Switzerland for the rest of his life, except when he made A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG and when he went to Hollywood for his special career "Oscar" in the 1970s). Because he was not an American he could not be drafted by the U.S. So he sold (with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford) U. S. War Bonds. But in Great Britain tens of thousands had perished in World War One battlefields, and the public there was upset at Chaplin, who they considered a "slacker" and a coward. Chaplin eventually did overcome this, but remnants of the resentment followed him until he died. This does not detract from the success of SHOULDER ARMS as a film, but it does suggest why Chaplin did not do another modern war film until 1940, and a worthier target.

FerdinandVonGalitzien In these modern times (as subject known quite well to the director of the short film that this German count is going to talk about…), politically correct films are the "leitmotiv" of the modern young filmmakers' projects. "Shoulder Arms" directed by Herr Charlie Chaplin during WWI (the film was released only a few weeks before the armistice) is an obvious example of why the early cinema pioneers were a very bold people, certainly! To direct a humorous film inspired in the terrible, bloody First World War was a complicated matter that only few directors with those dangerous and daring ideas could be allowed to do… to venture upon such delicate enterprise and with success was reserved only to geniuses.As this German count said, "Shoulder Arms" was made during WWI, that time in where definitely the whole world lost its innocence (fortunately not the German fat heiresses of this aristocrat…) and it is a hilarious, inventive social satire about that and any war. The film it is full of great gags and entertaining film continuity for a story in where that tramp will live though risky and courageous adventures in the front …whether a hero for the allies… or not.To mock the war trenches, the unhealthiness, the frontal attacks and the Germans (how you dare!!... by the way, there are a lot of inaccuracies in the film … the German soldiers by that time had moustaches and longer beards not to mention that the Kaiser lacks many medals in his uniform…) in an elegant, funny and delicate way it is even today a film miracle impossible of being surpassed. Keeping in mind those terrible wartime circumstances, the difficult task is only possible thanks to a lot of creativity and talent. Obviously Herr Charlie Chaplin had very much of it.And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must go back to the Schloss trenches.Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

krorie Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp or Little Man character wins World War I, called The Great War at the time, single handedly, even capturing the Kaiser, something the entire Allied armed forces were unable to do. Too bad it all turns out to be a dream, which is somewhat of a cop out and the weakest part of this mesmerizing silent short (almost a feature film at 46 minutes).There are inventive gags galore including Charlie having to put on a gas mask to eat Limburger cheese sent from home, then using the cheese as a weapon against the Germans; Charlie sleeping underwater in a flooded trench next to a soldier he continues to annoy; Charlie disguising himself as a tree--one of his best sketches ever--and Charlie pretending to beat up his friend who has become a POW, then hugging him when the enemy is out of sight.One amazing feature is how much Charlie, when he is behind enemy lines dressed as a German, resembles Hitler over ten years before Hitler and his Nazi thugs rose to dominate German politics. Obviously Hitler patterned his appearance after Charlie's from this film.

Nazi_Fighter_David In reaction to the dullness of the films of actual combat in that time, the wartime public increasingly turned to humor as escape from monotony and anxiety… Charlie Chaplin feared that his great "Shoulder Arms" would offend people, but it became his greatest hit… In it, Charlie, by luck, courage, and devilish ingenuity wins the war singlehanded and brings a captive Kaiser in triumph to London… The chief difference between this hilarious burlesque and some of the serious war dramas was that in Charlie's case it all turned out to be a dream