He wanted to say, “I’ve just made the government millions, and I’ll make them millions more.” But that wasn’t how he felt. “Sydney, I had a revelation. I feel great sympathy for those in the trenches. I won’t be making fun of them.”

“I can’t see it.”

“It’s simple—it’s the same as ever, except the cops are Germans. Yes?”

Syd was shaking his head in elder-brother disapproval, and so a smile crept up on Chaplin. “Rhiannon,” he said, “hold the tree costume for now.” The moment Syd relaxed, Chaplin continued, “Make a Kaiser costume. Tailor it to fit Syd.”

He tended to shoot scenes in order, and in the first month, he filmed the whole domestic scene, the children, the throwing of plates, the physical, and he hated it. He felt as if he had been attuned to wonderful stories in his dreams, but when he turned his attention to them too carefully, they dissolved, spun candy left out in the rain.

He began again with basic training. He drilled, and made tremendous mistakes with his rifle, with his attempts to obey orders, and with the huge, floppy boots. He wasn’t creating ideas so much as listening for them. Yet he was not quite talented enough to use them. Then he built a trench.

He thought about all the things that made people miserable. He filmed the Germans stealing cigarettes from the Americans, and then, because they were starving, eating them. He imagined them so hungry that they ate their uniforms. He had a shoe made of licorice and toyed with it, then put it away. How far could he go? Cannibalism?

He returned to the American side and elected to flood the trench with water while the soldiers were trying to sleep. Syd told him that this wasn’t funny.

Chaplin asked Eddie Sutherland, who was assisting, “How’s the water?”

“It’s freezing.”

“Good. Syd, get in the water.”

Syd gaped at him. “You’re putting the Kaiser in the trenches?”

“No, you’re getting two roles in this film. You get to be a doughboy. Get in the water.”

Throughout, when Syd complained that he felt new symptoms of influenza, Chaplin told him to be quiet, that many young men would kill for just one part in the new Chaplin film, and he was giving him two, out of love, so just sit still in the water and try not to behave like a baby.