Monday, November 11, 1918, after just a week of filming, Sunnyside (still referred to with the working title Jack of All Trades) experienced its first of many interruptions: “Peace was declared 11 am,” reads a page of the daily production report, “No shooting today”. The joys of archive materials in which History, an anecdotal detail and production secrets are all written in the same hand. Chaplin’s first film in a rural setting where the dynamics of love pit the city against the country, Sunnyside replaces the authority of the club with an abusive boss (already a character in His Musical Career and Work, it would make a comeback a few years later in The Circus and become a universal theme with Modern Times). Chaplin shot in one round one of the most eloquent scenes: the Tramp herding cows along a country road (in a side travelling shot with a three-quarter view from slightly above and then a backward travelling shot as he walks toward the camera from behind the animals’ rumps). The final cut left out a barber scene with Albert Austin, which would later be developed into the famous sequence in The Great Dictator. The oneiric dance with the nymphs made his- tory: “Where do these dancers come from?” wrote Delluc, “not from the world of Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller or the Ballets Russes. They are true nymphs in flesh and blood… As for Charlie… have you seen L’après-midi d’un Faune?”

Cecilia Cenciarelli