The Big Parade (1925)
Jim Apperson, the idle son of a wealthy family, enlists in the American Expeditionary Force almost on a whim, trains in a French village where he falls for a farm girl named Melisande, and is then marched into the killing ground of the Argonne.
One of the biggest box-office successes of the silent era, King Vidor’s The Big Parade set the pattern for the Hollywood combat film, balancing romance and barracks comedy against an unsparing view of the front. It is preserved in the National Film Registry.
Background
The Big Parade was one of the biggest box-office successes of the silent era and helped establish the pattern that many Hollywood war films would follow afterward: an ordinary young man’s enlistment and romance giving way, in the second half, to the brutal reality of combat. Director King Vidor balanced the film’s early scenes of barracks comedy and a wartime romance in a French village against an unsparing depiction of the fighting at the front, including a tense sequence of soldiers advancing through a forest under sniper fire.
What to watch for
Watch for how deliberately the film’s tone shifts partway through, from the lighter courtship material to the grim, almost documentary-feeling combat scenes, a contrast meant to mirror the disillusionment that many veterans of the First World War described in their own accounts. It remains one of the most highly regarded American films to deal directly with the war, and it is preserved in the National Film Registry.
