Boy, am I glad to have seen this on the big screen instead of The Marvels this weekend. And thanks to my Melodrama professor for getting my class into the screening! I hadn’t gotten to see a silent film on the big screen yet, but with this lovely restored print and an organist accompanying the onscreen action, it was well worth it and added so much vintage ambience.
I half-expected The Big Parade to be a big-budget aviation crowdpleaser akin to Wings from a couple years later, but I did not get that and I am not complaining. Similarly to Wings, the first half is quite comedic as we get to know the soldiers and their camaraderie, serving as effective buildup once we get into combat. However, The Big Parade takes a shockingly bleak turn, taking us right into the trenches with the poor soldiers, and it’s not pretty. It’s a refreshingly unglamorous portrayal of combat for all of its brutality and pointlessness. Once we get to the tense, often brutal battle sequences, the gut-punch gets all the worse due to the more upbeat first half. It reminds me so much of All Quiet on the Western front, down to a similar scene of a soldier empathizing with the enemy. A common, powerful thread in media about WWI, between this and Grand Illusion, is the mutual respect and empathy that could occur even between enemies, something that clearly went out the window with the rise of Nazi Germany. It makes that conflict feel all the more pointless to both the audience and the soldiers; what the hell are they fighting and dying for? This is a refreshing, deeply devastating anti-war story that undoubtedly influenced most cinematic war stories to come. On top of that, King Vidor’s direction is superb, getting expressive, sympathetic performances out of the soldiers, led by John Gilbert; and committing to gritty realism when the soldiers are stationed in France. Pre-Code Hollywood films like this have a certain grimy atmosphere and subversive nature that would be lessened dramatically once the Production Code came in. Case in point, there’s even some gore and nudity, which could come as a shock to modern audiences.
The only thing that’s really keeping this otherwise powerful movie from a higher score is the main love story between Gilbert’s soldier and a French woman. It leads to some hit-and-miss humor and comes off as a bit coercive; not to mention that it grinds the story to an almost complete halt in the second act.
Boy, am I glad to have seen this on the big screen instead of The Marvels this weekend. And thanks to my Melodrama professor for getting my class into the screening! I hadn’t gotten to see a silent film on the big screen yet, but with this lovely restored print and an organist accompanying the onscreen action, it was well worth it and added so much vintage ambience.
I half-expected The Big Parade to be a big-budget aviation crowdpleaser akin to Wings from a couple years later, but I did not get that and I am not complaining. Similarly to Wings, the first half is quite comedic as we get to know the soldiers and their camaraderie, serving as effective buildup once we get into combat. However, The Big Parade takes a shockingly bleak turn, taking us right into the trenches with the poor soldiers, and it’s not pretty. It’s a refreshingly unglamorous portrayal of combat for all of its brutality and pointlessness. Once we get to the tense, often brutal battle sequences, the gut-punch gets all the worse due to the more upbeat first half. It reminds me so much of All Quiet on the Western front, down to a similar scene of a soldier empathizing with the enemy. A common, powerful thread in media about WWI, between this and Grand Illusion, is the mutual respect and empathy that could occur even between enemies, something that clearly went out the window with the rise of Nazi Germany. It makes that conflict feel all the more pointless to both the audience and the soldiers; what the hell are they fighting and dying for? This is a refreshing, deeply devastating anti-war story that undoubtedly influenced most cinematic war stories to come. On top of that, King Vidor’s direction is superb, getting expressive, sympathetic performances out of the soldiers, led by John Gilbert; and committing to gritty realism when the soldiers are stationed in France. Pre-Code Hollywood films like this have a certain grimy atmosphere and subversive nature that would be lessened dramatically once the Production Code came in. Case in point, there’s even some gore and nudity, which could come as a shock to modern audiences.
The only thing that’s really keeping this otherwise powerful movie from a higher score is the main love story between Gilbert’s soldier and a French woman. It leads to some hit-and-miss humor and comes off as a bit coercive; not to mention that it grinds the story to an almost complete halt in the second act.
