THE BIG PARADE
US, 1925, 141 minutes, Black and white.
John Gilbert, Renee Adoree.
Directed by King Vidor.
The Big Parade is a classic of the 1920s silent era. It has the reputation of being the most successful film of the silent era at the box office. It takes its place along with other war films of the 1920s including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with Valentino, Wings with Gary Cooper (the winner of the first Oscar for best film). It led to the making of All Quiet on the Western Front, released in 1930 and also an Oscar winner for best film.
The Big Parade was considered to be anti-war in its time. It is interesting to look in retrospect at the attitudes of the 1920s, especially Hollywood, to the American experience in World War One.
The first part of the film focuses on John Gilbert as an idle rich young man who joins up and goes to France. The first part of the film is presented with the light touch. However, when he goes into action, the film is an extraordinary re-creation of the battlefields of World War One.
The film was acclaimed at its time but also in later decades when it was made a classic for the National Film Preservation Board in 1992. It won the Medal of Honour from Photoplay in 1925 and was instrumental in consolidating producer Irving Thalberg’s place at MGM.
When re-released at the San Sebastian film festival in 1983 it won a commendation from OCIC, the International Catholic Organisation for Cinema.
1. The impact of this war film as a classic? Its impact in the twenties, now? Expectations from the title - its themes and explanation during the film?
2. The status of the film in the twenties, a big production, King Vidor, John Gilbert? The 8 years from the ending of World War I? A silent classic?
3. The style of film-making in 1925, silent techniques, fixed photography, the captions, the realism of war and the re-creation of recent events?
4. The attitude of America to World War I in 1923? American involvement. heroism, the experience of being in battle outside America, the bonds between America and France? The memory of suffering and death?
5. The importance of the structure: the American framework, the training the French sequences and the building up of love, the long time given to the war experience, the finale? Audience interest, involvement?
6. The value of the human story as a setting for the war - the moralizing tone given to the introduction of the characters: the family, mother, her devotion, father and his distance, older brother and his business judgment. younger brother as ne'er-do-well but hero? the girl next door? How well were these conventional characters presented? Family relationships, Jim in his setting and being called up to the war by enthusiasm, the parade etc.? (Slim in his background. Bull and his background?)
7. The film's portrait of war, the enthusiasm of American involvement, patriotism, war effort, the training sequences, the spirit amongst the men and their morale, the comic overtones?
8. The transition to France and the vigil for war? The amount of time given to the French sequences, the Americans in France and having to adapt, language difficulties, the inhabitants and the anticipation of war? Jim and his meeting of Melisande, her personality, character, attraction? Jim’s dilemma and wondering about Justyn? Jim invited to Melisande’s home and meeting her family? His falling in love with her and taking this experience into the war?
9. The importance of the involvement, the advance., the visual portrayal of war with the long shots, the advancing men, the continual slaughter, orders and trench life? The focusing on the three men in the trench and their experience of war, danger? Slim and his mission and his being wounded?
10. The importance of the effect of this on Jim and his shouting and defying orders? What was happening to Jim? The reaction to war?
11. His heroism and his injury? The discovery of where he was amid the search for Melisande? A meaning to his life as well as heroism?
12. The pathos of Melisande and the French refugees wandering the countryside? The irony of Jim’s searching for her and missing her?
13. The contract with the return - the hero, the long sequences with his mother and the emphasis on mother-love? His father's acceptance? The irony of Justyn and his elder brother, his brother's patronizing welcome? The sketching of the American coming home after such European and war experience?
14. The famous ending and Melisande in the fields? Jim on the horizon and the conventional happy ending but within the context of the experience of war?
15. How valuable a presentation of war, critique of war, the effect of war on the Americans, the big parade of men and machines? War as changing people's lives and testing their values? Death?
