MoMA restores Charlie Chaplin’s 'Shoulder Arms' to its original 1918 version

The museum’s restoration unveils the film as American audiences first saw it over a century ago.

Charlie Chaplin in Shoulder Arms (1918), produced by Pathé. Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

By Novanka Laras and Sarah Oktaviany

The Museum of Modern Art’s annual film preservation showcase, To Save and Project, will conclude on Thursday with a special screening of Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms. This 1918 silent comedy, starring Chaplin as a World War I soldier, has entertained audiences for over a century. However, MoMA’s latest restoration offers a version of the film that is unlike what most viewers have seen in decades.

“It’s an unknown Chaplin film, in effect, that no one has actually seen as it was released,” said Dave Kehr, a curator in MoMA’s film department. The museum’s restoration aims to reconstruct the Shoulder Arms that American audiences first experienced in 1918, a goal complicated by the film’s unique production history and the various versions that have circulated over the years.

Like many films of the silent era, Shoulder Arms was shot using two cameras simultaneously. At the time, Kodak had not yet developed a reliable way to create duplicate negatives, so filmmakers like Chaplin had to produce multiple negatives to meet global demand. Chaplin crafted four different versions of the film:

The A negative, featuring his preferred takes from his preferred camera angles, was used to make prints for U.S. theaters.
The B negative, which included the same preferred takes but from the secondary camera angle, was meant for international audiences.
The C negative, composed of second-choice takes from the primary angle.
The D negative, containing second-choice takes from the secondary angle, were also created to expand distribution.

Although Chaplin and his editors tried to maintain consistency across versions, slight variations in performances and camera positioning resulted in subtle but noticeable differences depending on which print was used.

In 1943, the United States Army approached Chaplin about screening Shoulder Arms to boost morale among World War II troops. Chaplin was eager to comply, but by then, the original A negative had deteriorated beyond use. Due to copyright issues and a fire in 1938 that destroyed the B negative, Chaplin’s cinematographer, Rollie Totheroh, was left with only the C and D negatives to create a new print.

Further complicating matters, the army projected the film on sound-era equipment that ran at 24 frames per second—faster than the original 20 frames per second used in 1918. To compensate, the film was stretch-printed, meaning certain frames were duplicated, resulting in an unnaturally jerky motion.

The most widely seen version of Shoulder Arms today is the one included in The Chaplin Revue (1959), which compiled Shoulder Arms, A Dog’s Life (1918), and The Pilgrim (1923). However, this version was largely derived from the D negative, meaning that most of what audiences have seen consists of Chaplin’s second-choice takes from his second-choice camera angles, further altered by stretch-printing.

In 2021, film historian Adrian Gerber, working with the Swiss archive Lichtspiel/Kinemathek Bern, launched a project to track down surviving Shoulder Arms prints. MoMA, already possessing several copies, had been undertaking its own reconstruction efforts, which Gerber only recently discovered.

MoMA’s objective is to recreate the film as it was originally shown in American theaters. The version screening on Thursday has been assembled primarily from surviving prints that match the A negative. Some sections, however, had to be sourced from 16-millimeter and 28-millimeter prints. If 35-millimeter versions of these missing portions surface in the future, the restoration will be completed.

Unlike previous releases, this version of Shoulder Arms eliminates stretch-printing, restoring the film to its proper 20 frames per second. The original 1918 title cards, which were modified in a 1927 reissue by Pathé, have also been reinstated.

Charlie Chaplin in the 1918 Pathé film Shoulder Arms. Photo by George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

The differences between MoMA’s restoration and The Chaplin Revue version become evident in key scenes.

For instance, when Chaplin’s character first enters the trench, the restored version shows him walking toward the camera, which tracks backward in sync with his movement. In the Chaplin Revue cut, he enters from the opposite side, with the camera initially moving forward.

Similarly, the famous scene in which Chaplin disguises himself as a tree begins with a subtle but telling contrast. In MoMA’s version, Chaplin scratches his behind before a cut brings the audience closer, showing a slightly more irritable expression than in the 1959 version. These small variations highlight how Chaplin’s comic timing and character nuances changed across different takes.

Chaplin frequently revised his silent films, updating them for new audiences and technologies. “He reissued almost all of his silent films at one time or another, to keep himself relevant as his own production slowed up,” said film historian Scott Eyman, author of Charlie Chaplin vs. America.

The Chaplin estate has generally prioritized the versions Chaplin left behind when he died in 1977, leading to ongoing debates among scholars and cinephiles about which versions should be considered definitive. “Within the critical community, people want to see what he made when he was at full-bore,” Eyman noted.

Arnold Lozano, managing director of the Paris-based office that oversees Chaplin’s holdings, emphasized that the estate’s screening policies align with the director’s later-life preferences. However, while The Chaplin Revue version and Chaplin’s added score remain under copyright, the original 1918 film itself has long since entered the public domain in the United States. This legal status has allowed MoMA to reconstruct and screen the film as it was originally presented.

Comparing Chaplin’s constant reworking of his films to George Lucas’s revisions of Star Wars, Kehr noted, “What we’re doing for you is the 1977 Star Wars, and not the 2024 Star Wars.” For audiences eager to experience Shoulder Arms as Chaplin first intended, MoMA’s restoration offers a rare and invaluable glimpse into the past.