Copper Country at the Silver Screen in 1918

Shoulder Arms (Charlie Chaplin, 1918, 46 min.) plus selected film shorts and newsreels

September 29, 7:30pm

Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts (co-sponsor), Michigan Tech

Shoulder Arms is the first feature film directed by Chaplin, who plays a soldier in boot camp in the “awkward squad.”  Once in France Charlie gets no letters from home. He finally gets a package containing limburger cheese which requires a gas mask and which he throws over into the German trench. He goes “over the top” and captures thirteen Germans (“I surrounded them”), then volunteers to wander through the German lines disguised as a tree trunk. With the help of a French girl he captures the Kaiser and the Crown Prince and is given a statue and victory parade in New York and then … fellow soldiers wake him from his dream.

The film will be screened with live musical accompaniment by guest silent-film organist Jay Warren, Chicago’s foremost photoplay organist.