The Big Parade (1925)

Originally posted to Facebook on 12/17/2017

The Big Parade was our second film from 1925, and the first time we have seen John Gilbert in a leading role. We'd seen him once before in a smaller part, behind Lon Chaney in He Who Gets Slapped (which just last week was added to the National Film Registry.) This is also the first film we've seen directed by King Vidor, who continued working up through the late fifties, and was nominated for five directing Oscars along the way.

This film follows a somewhat familiar arc as John Gilbert is introduced as a less-than-serious young man, and becomes battle-hardened and cynical as a result of his experiences during World War 1. Between the early scenes of him as a civilian and the later battle scenes, his character is stationed in a French village, where the main focus is the growing relationship between him and the female lead, played by Renée Adorée (who, like Gilbert, would be dead before the next decade was out.) This section, I think, is the most flawed portion of the film. It is not just that the film is not terribly convincing in portraying Gilbert and Adorée falling in love, but also that an hour is spent in the attempt. This delays the most effective portion of the film -- the depiction of the war -- which includes a tension-filled sequence during which Gilbert and the other soldiers slowly march through a forest filled with snipers whittling down their outfit, one by one. Following that there are also the series of trench warfare scenes that one would expect in a WW1 film. I strongly suspect that these latter scenes influenced 1930's All's Quiet on the Western Front, which has a similar kind of intensity. That film, though, depicted a lengthy campaign which helped to communicate how the attrition and constant state of fear weighed upon soldiers, whereas The Big Parade shows Gilbert's growth and alienation in a much more compacted time-frame. Also, unlike the later film, The Big Parade is less conspicuously anti-war, focusing much more on Gilbert's specific story.

This is the first true war film that we've seen (excepting Chaplin's Shoulder Arms), and the first to attempt to depict combat with any degree of verisimilitude, which made it a worthwhile viewing despite its other flaws. It is probably at least partially a result of the particular films that we've selected, but it does seem that Hollywood was a little slow to fully engage with WW1, which is a big contrast with, for instance, the approach during WW2 a couple of decades later.

Next week we move on to our third film from 1925, Chaplin's The Gold Rush -- the fourth feature of his we'll see. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT