As he listened to the single violin, whose tremulous notes spoke of failed crops, loneliness, wide autumn winter skies with no sign of rain, Alf understood he was unable to write a memo to Accounting in New York that explained how elaborate the set had become in his absence. The stage— once a simple museum—had expanded to reflect Chaplin’s idea that there should be a fantasy sequence, and so its borders had dropped away, the walls extending upward and east and west, incorporating classical types of architecture, ziggurats and Doric columns, before winding around a corner and exploding into even more bizarre shapes and forms, Cubist in motif, to which the carpenters were now adding another wing, using pegs and gravity, because Mr. Chaplin did not want the sound of hammering today.

The village had been half disassembled. The church, with its ramshackle steeple, was still up, serving as a backdrop for the musicians. They sat in comfortable chairs, in a semicircle, and at the front were (all silent) a piccolo player, a pair of flutes, a pair of oboes, an English horn, and the remainder of an eighty-eight-piece orchestra. There was also a cannon, for Chaplin had decided that, in order to concentrate better on Sunnyside, he would be conducting the 1812 Overture.

Now it was just the opening measures, based on the heart-rending, quiet hymn “God Preserve Thy People.” Chaplin himself was taking lead violin, and he had requested that the orchestra not yet join in, except for one cello, there in the third row. When he nodded, the other cellos joined in.

He played dressed in the shoes, the trousers, the tattered shirt and vest, but no mustache, no hat. He closed his eyes and felt himself dissolving into simple, reflective longing. The horns played a call and response with the strings, which began to build to the first crescendo—the timpani player raised his mallet—and Chaplin broke.

“Hold on,” he said. “From the beginning. At my count.”

Meanwhile, Rollie Totheroh was attempting to wrestle the new camera setup into workable order. They had recently purchased a Bell and Howell, which they had mounted on a dolly. But to get the proper angle on the new set, Chaplin had declared at dawn that the camera would need to start high in the air, which meant the railroad tracks might be seen.

Especially because he needed to get the angels into the frame. There was now a host of angels, mostly girl art-school students fitted with wings and wearing harnesses under their togas, all hanging on wires from telephone poles.

“We can get them easily,” Rollie had told Chaplin earlier that morning.

“Not if you’re going to get the statues at the same time.”

The statues were on their pedestals, caked with (because the cerise paste had proved unstable) a flour-based makeup that gave them the appearance of marble.