The Big Parade
Die große Parade
Source: Filmarchiv Austria, © 1925 Turner Entertainment Co. All Rights Reserved.
Renée Adorée, John Gilbert
The Big Parade | Die große Parade by King Vidor
USA 1925, Retrospective
Source: Filmarchiv Austria, © 1925 Turner Entertainment Co. All Rights Reserved.
Renée Adorée, John Gilbert
The Big Parade | Die große Parade by King Vidor
USA 1925, Retrospective
Source: Deutsche Kinemathek, © 1925 Turner Entertainment Co. All Rights Reserved.
John Gilbert
The Big Parade | Die große Parade by King Vidor
USA 1925, Retrospective
Source: Sammlung Cinémathèque suisse, © 1925 Turner Entertainment Co. All Rights Reserved.
King Vidor
The Big Parade | Die große Parade by King Vidor
USA 1925, Retrospective
Source: Sammlung Cinémathèque suisse. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
When the United States enters World War I, three young men from New York end up in the same company – a construction worker, a bartender, and Jim Apperson, son of a wealthy manufacturer. After boot camp, the company is shipped to the French village of Champillon, where Jim falls in love with farmer’s daughter Melisande. Once sent to the front, amid the craters of no-man’s-land, they experience the full horror of war … The characters seem at first almost to develop as if in a rural romance film, but in the second part, they are quickly ground to a pulp. Told from Jim’s perspective, The Big Parade puts average soldiers at the centre of the story. As King Vidor put it, “he wasn’t a hero. He was just a guy who went along, and watched, and observed, and reacted”. As the second-highest grossing silent film of all time, it established MGM as a major studio. Its radical naturalism, which did not shy from showing the humanity of opponents of war, was a key influence on anti-war films that followed. For King Vidor, it was the opening salvo in a trilogy of films on his cardinal leitmotifs of “war, wheat, steel”, to be rounded out by Our Daily Bread and An American Romance.
With
- John Gilbert
- Renée Adorée
- Hobart Bosworth
- Claire McDowell
- Claire Adams
- Robert Ober
- Tom O’Brien
- Karl Dane
- Rosita Marstini
- Julanne Johnston
Crew
| Director | King Vidor |
| Screenplay | Harry Behn |
| Story | Laurence Stallings Plume (1925) |
| Cinematography | John Arnold |
| Editing | Hugh Wynn |
| Art Director | Cedric Gibbons, James Basevi |
| Costumes | Ethel P. Chaffin |
| Producer | King Vidor |
Produced by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. (Loew’s, Inc.)
Additional information
Print: Warner Bros. Pictures Germany, Hamburg