Synopsis
The Big Parade (1925) is King Vidor's silent war drama, and you can watch online one of the most influential films ever made about the First World War. Jim Apperson (John Gilbert), the carefree son of a wealthy family, gets swept up in the patriotic mood, enlists, and ships out to France with little idea of what waits for him.
In the trenches, class lines dissolve. Jim falls in with two ordinary working men — a scrappy bartender and a hulking, awkward riveter — and that bond turns out to be sturdier than anything he had back home. In a French village he meets Mélisande (Renée Adorée); they share no common language, and the famous scene where he teaches her to chew gum runs almost entirely on glances. Then the order comes to move to the front, and the farewell amid a column of departing trucks became a textbook image of silent cinema.
Vidor refuses to prettify the war: the advance through a sniper-raked wood is staged so you all but count each step under fire. The picture was among the era's biggest box-office successes and set the template for anti-war film right up to All Quiet on the Western Front. Its ending is bitter and strikes no heroic pose — which is exactly why it's still remembered a century on. Stream The Big Parade (1925) online on iFILM.
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