On the shoulder!

The film was shot during the First World War . The production of the film began on May 27, 1918 , and ended on September 16, 1918. Chaplin planned to shoot the film in five parts. The beginning was to portray “life at home,” the middle was “war,” and the end was a “banquet,” at which all the monarchs of Europe honored the Tramp for capturing the Kaiser . The “Life at Home” part was filmed, filming of the “banquet” began, but they were not included in the film.

Chaplin dressed his hero in a soldier's uniform, which was obviously not made to fit, put on his belt a ton of "most necessary" things for the soldier, including a grater and a machine for beating egg yolks, and sent him across the ocean to the battlefields of Europe. The film was a great success, especially among the soldiers.

Charlot is in an American infantry training camp. In his autobiography, Chaplin calls his character from this film Charlot .

After training, he goes to bed in a tent and sees a dream:

The tramp gets to the forefront in France . Bombs explode everywhere, the Tramp recalls a peaceful life. Bring mail - The tramp does not receive letters. He reads someone else's letter over the soldier’s shoulder. Parcels of the Red Cross arrive . The tramp gets cupcake and Limburger cheese. The tramp puts on a gas mask, and throws cheese into the German trenches. It begins to rain, floods the trenches with water. Soldiers sleep at night in the water.

The next morning, during the attack, the Tramp captures 13 German soldiers. The officer asks him: “How did you do this?” The tramp replies: “I surrounded them!”

The tramp grabs the German officer, and slaps him on the ass, like a child. German soldiers applaud joyfully. In the role of the German officer - Loyal Underwood - his height was even smaller than Chaplin.

A tramp with friends goes on a secret mission behind enemy lines. A tramp in a tree suit rescues his friend from execution. He runs away from the German patrol, and hides in a dilapidated cottage. In the role of the hostess of the cottage Edna Pervians. A German patrol arrives and arrests Edna. She is taken to the German headquarters. The tramp sets off to rescue Edna.

At this time, the Kaiser and the Crown Prince arrive at the headquarters. A tramp takes them prisoner, and arrives at an American position in a Kaiser car. Everyone congratulates the Tramp, and here he is awakened in a tent of a training camp.

• Charlie Chaplin - Rookie
• Edna Purvians - French Girl
• Sidney Chaplin - Sergeant / Kaiser
• Jack Wilson - German Crown Prince
• Henry Bergman - German Sergeant / Field Marshal von Hindenburg
• Albert Austin - American soldier / German soldier / Kaiser driver
• Tom Wilson - sergeant in training camp
• John Rand - American soldier

• The German soldiers in the film wear Prussian helmets “ Pickelhaube ”, model 1842 , although in 1916 the German army began to switch to the steel helmet M16, model 1916 .
• The helmets of American soldiers in the film are stylized as a tramp's bowler hat. In the arsenal of the U.S. Army at the time were helmets M1917 - model 1917 . They were almost completely identical to the British MkI helmet.
• The German patrol in the film is armed with a light machine gun Lewis , adopted by the U.S. Army in 1917 .
• Chaplin's older brother, Sidney Chaplin, starred as Kaiser and the American sergeant.

... thanks to the artist’s skill, the most unbridled buffoonery was here in organic unity with a realistic plan, because the whole tragicomic eccentricity rested on an extremely truthful psychological basis ... Charlie performed his incredible feats while sleeping in a tent, thanks to which the audience did not take them seriously, but how a joke, a parody of the Hollywood military "fighters", as a witty ridicule of fictional heroes and their implausible feats. The artistic unity of the film was also promoted by a slight hint here and there, a mockery that revealed the author’s genuine attitude to his Charlie and his actions ... “On the shoulder!” Was the first truly anti-war feature film in the history of cinema.

- A.V. Kukarkin. Charlie Chaplin. - 2nd ed. - M.: Art, 1988. - S. 60-62.

• On the shoulder! On the Internet Movie Database
• On the shoulder! (English) on allmovie  
• Movie in the online archive
• Film shots, including scenes not included. British Film Institute.