Konterr Brilliant and touching

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Antonius Block I found it tough to rate this film, because the strength of its WWI action footage is offset by a weak build-up and silly romance. The film is commendable in showing us the horrors of war in a dramatic hellscape, but at 151 minutes, it's far too long, and would have been better if the 90 minute build-up had been edited down. It's to great fanfare that a rich young American (John Gilbert) enlists, and it is nice that the film (eventually) contrasts this tone of those scenes to the reality of war, since this is precisely the disillusionment the world went through. He befriends a couple of blue collar guys (Karl Dane and Tom O'Brien), and oddly enough, there's very little concept of military command early on. The men go to France, get settled into a village, and after inexplicably shoveling a manure pile the first night, they're free to carouse about and hit on the local women, one of whom is Renee Adoree. The film moves at a snail's pace, with drawn out scenes and gags that aren't funny, culminating in a highly melodramatic goodbye scene with Adoree when the men are finally called up to the front. Here is where the film gets interesting, though it's not until the 105 minute point before we see anything that resembles authenticity. At first our heroes are walking calmly through a forest while snipers shoot at them, advancing despite soldiers falling until they reach a tree line, at which point the Germans simply raise their hands in surrender. Good grief. Eventually they reach pockmarked, barren fields, and after facing explosions and chemical weapons, hunker down. The film's silly tone is finally broken when one of them is hit, and another screams out into the night "I came to fight - not to wait and rot in a lousy hole while they murder my pal! Waiting! Orders! Mud! Blood! Stinking stiffs! What the hell do we get out of this war anyway!" before crawling out and trying to save him. Upon finding him dead, he screams "They got him! They got him! GOD DAMN THEIR SOULS!" and then charges a machine gun nest. It's meant to have high emotional impact, and at least it's action, but it seems a little ridiculous.It does get better still though, and I have to give the film credit for showing the devastating impact of war. The cinematography is awe-inspiring and frightening. Men advance like ghostly zombies through smoke, gunfire, and explosions, emerging through haze in darkened scenes splashed with pyrotechnics. There is a touching scene with an enemy soldier in a pothole, impressive as it predates 'All Quiet on the Western Front'. The human empathy and feeling that we're all brothers resonates all the more, having come just moments after a murderous rage. The aftermath is also good. I loved the brief scene in the hospital, the shots of the French abandoning bombed out buildings, and later the family reunion. As mother and son embrace, director King Vidor overlays a powerful montage of maternal memories of the boy through the years, my favorite sequence.The last 45 minutes has gravitas, fantastic scenes, and a real message, and is easily 4 out of 5 stars. However, I can't overlook the first 105 minutes, and it's unlikely I would want to watch the film again because of them.

evanston_dad It occurred to me while watching "The Big Parade" that a double feature of it and "All Quiet on the Western Front" would just about be the last cinematic word on World War I.If you're looking for a movie director with range, look no further than King Vidor, who could direct an astonishing war epic like this and then deliver a melodramatic weepie like the equally sensational "Stella Dallas." "The Big Parade" is silent film at its visual best. It features perhaps the best goodbye scene ever captured on camera, when cadet John Gilbert leaves for the war and shares a tearful farewell with his girl, while a phalanx of army vehicles charges by in the background. It's only one of many scenes that uses parade imagery for increasingly ironic purposes, culminating in a twist at the end that had to have hit audiences at the time, when the war was still a pretty fresh wound in the psyches of many, like a ton of bricks.Not just an excellent silent film, but an excellent film, period, and one that would hold its own with any number of more sophisticated examples of the art form made since.Grade: A

zetes King Vidor's big break (though not his first film, by a long shot) remains one of the best WWI movies ever made. It does take a long time to get to its best stuff, though. The first 90 minutes, while hardly bad, made me wonder where its reputation was coming from. John Gilbert plays a loafer who is kind of forced to join the war by his overzealous fiancée (Claire Adams). While waiting for something to happen in France, he falls for a French girl (Renee Adoree). The scene where he teaches her to chew gum is classic, but I was a bit annoyed by Gilbert's comic relief buddies (Tom O'Brien and Karl Dane). Dane in particular looks like a gigantic Howdy Doody come straight from Hell. Both of these guys are just unfunny, and there's even a bit of a rapey vibe whenever they get around Adoree. Fortunately, when the actual fighting starts, the two become quite heroic and the film just gets a Hell of a lot better. First, there's a huge, beautiful sequence where the troops are moving out and Adoree tries desperately to find Gilbert. The next great sequence - in fact, one of the best sequences I've ever seen - has the soldiers slowly progressing through a forest while snipers take them out (a little plink on a violin string and a guy in the background falls down). This sequence gets more and more horrifying as it goes along. The film never surpasses those two sequences, but it's great for the remainder.

rickodonovan Having canvassed the majority of extant films from the silent era, I have a basis of comparison in evaluating this 1925 film in which one John Gilbert proved beyond any doubt that his dramatic capabilities extended beyond matinée idol and the "Great Lover" tag that he so abhorred up until his untimely death of consumption at 36. Gilbert was leading man for none other than Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, and Mary Pickford- a feat no other actor could boast, and indicative of the span of his career. Here he is the spoiled rich kid who volunteers for infantry and combat duty. It was a theme that Oliver Stone would draw from his own experience decades later in writing Charlie Sheen's character in Platoon. Here he is torn between a fiancée back home and an absolutely endearing French girl played with unbelievable subtlety and naturalness by Renee Adoree. Gilbert and co-stars Adoree and Karl Dane all died tragic deaths within just a few years of this outstanding film. Gilbert essentially drank himself to death, Adoree died of tuberculosis in 1933, and Dane committed suicide when the talkie era 86d his illustrious silent film career. We have them all under the careful direction of the best director of all time King Vidor. To my knowledge, over his 60+ year career in Hollywood, Vidor made not a single flop, not one film that isn't critically acclaimed. Among his arsenal- The Crowd, Show People, Ben Hur, The Jack-knife Man, La Boheme. So here I go with my bold declaration.... The Big Parade is King's finest hour. It is cleverly paced, the editing is flawless, the acting is so natural you'd think you were watching real events as they unfold. The musical score by Carl Davis is the best he has ever conjured, and that's saying an awful lot. THE BIG PARADE. Yes. Get it, turn the lights out, clear the mind, and ready yourself for the film experience of a lifetime.