WWI epic THE BIG PARADE (1925) presented by Silents, Please! STL

This film is presented by Silents, Please! STL and will feature a special introduction from SPSTL’s Kate Stewart.

“Every war movie since owes it an irredeemable debt… Vidor energizes The Big Parade by smashing together two atoms, a nation’s pride and a mother’s sorrow, the combination refracting the audience’s emotions into an unsettling tangle. It all concludes on a decisive note of despair and regret, but audiences carry from the film a heart so full, so torn by elation and the abyss, that they won’t know if they’re coming or going.” – The Village Voice

For Armistice Day, Silents, Please! brings you the quintessential WWI epic. The highest-grossing silent film of all time, as well as one cinema’s first truly realistic war dramas, The Big Parade offers an unflinching look at the perils of combat. John Gilbert stars as an idle rich boy who joins the US Army’s Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in the Great War. Along the way he befriends two working class men, Slim (Karl Dane) and Bull (Tom O’Brien), finds love with a French girl (Renée Adorée), and experiences the horrors of trench warfare. Praised for its realistic depiction of warfare, King Vidor’s epic heavily influenced many subsequent war films, particularly the 1930 Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front. In 1992, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.