The Big Parade Blu-ray delivers stunning video and great audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
The idle son of a rich businessman joins the army when the U.S.A. enters World War One. He is sent to France, where he becomes friends with two working-class soldiers. He also falls in love with a Frenchwoman, but has to leave her to move to the frontline.
For more about The Big Parade and the The Big Parade Blu-ray release, see the The Big Parade Blu-ray Review published by Michael Reuben on October 5, 2013 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.5 out of 5.
The "big parade" of the title—a long line of trucks carrying soldiers and guns toward the
battlefront in what was then called "The Great War"—does not appear until ninety minutes into
director King Vidor's 1925 silent epic, but you can feel its inevitable approach from early on.
Vidor had told MGM's legendary head of production, Irving Thalberg, that he was tired of
making films that came and went in a week. He wanted to direct a picture that would last. With
The Big Parade, which played for nearly two years and became the highest grossing silent film in
MGM's history, Vidor achieved his goal and solidified his stature in the first rank of filmmakers.
In the accompanying supplements, film historians Jeffrey Vance and Kevin Brownlow make a
compelling case that Vidor was the true successor to D.W. Griffith. As Vance says, if Griffith
made film into an art form, it was Vidor who brought it into the 20th Century.
And what subject could be more appropriate for establishing a 20th Century way of seeing than
World War I? More than any specific date on the calendar, that bloody conflict drew a clear dividing line
between the 19th Century's Eurocentric colonialism and the new era's international scene in
which America was beginning to play a larger role and wars would be waged on a scale
heretofore unthinkable. Vidor disliked the pageantry of the war films he had seen up until that
point. He wanted to tell a story from a common soldier's point of view, something more visceral
and less overtly heroic. The Big Parade is the first American war film that doesn't celebrate war
itself, and its influence in that respect has been incalculable. Entire sequences in the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
owe their staging to Vidor's earlier film.
Upon discovering that author Laurence Stallings' stage play What Price Glory had already been
optioned (Raoul Walsh would eventually direct it for Fox), Vidor persuaded Thalberg to hire
Stallings to supply an original story for The Big Parade, which was then dramatized by Vidor
and screenwriter Harry Behn. The story grew even larger after Thalberg saw Vidor's first cut,
realized the power of what the director had achieved and ordered additional scenes.
The central figure of The Big Parade is a pampered and idle young man, Jim Apperson (silent
film star John Gilbert, in what he personally considered his greatest performance).
Overshadowed by his more industrious brother, Harry (Robert Ober), who works in the family
business, Jim endures the disapproval of his father (Hobart Bosworth), which is made tolerable
by the indulgence of his mother (Claire McDowell). His heart belongs to a longtime neighbor,
Justyn Reed (Claire Adams)—or so he thinks.
But then the U.S. enters the long-running conflict in Europe, and everything changes.
Transported by a fit of patriotic enthusiasm, Jim joins his school chums and enlists. Justyn
swoons. Mr. Apperson is uncharacteristically proud of his wayward son. Jim marches off to war
in a haze of enthusiasm.
Of course, he doesn't go alone. The film gives Jim two companions from other walks of life.
Slim Jensen (Karl Dane) is a welder who can't wait to get into action. Lanky, a champion spitter
who always hits his target, with a face made for clowning, Slim is the film's comic sidekick in its
first half. The other companion is Bull O'Hara (Tim O'Brien), a stocky bartender whose
blowhard temperament suits him perfectly when he is promoted to corporal. This unlikely trio of
comrades, a classic example of the true democracy imposed by war's hazard and privation, is
melded into a unit in basic training, then shipped to France, where they spend much time waiting,
waiting, waiting in the farming village of Champillon.
Much of the first half of The Big Parade is played for laughs, as the soldiers in Jim's unit
accommodate themselves to wading through mud and muck, sleeping in haylofts, fighting off
lice and doing laundry in streams. Vidor stages a Chaplinesque scene of physical hijinks when
Jim is chosen to obtain a barrel for building a makeshift shower and returns with it over his head,
covering his upper body, his vision limited to the small circle of light where he can peer out of
the barrel's bunghole. It is through this "peephole" that Jim encounters Melisande (Renée
Adorée), the pretty French farm girl with whom he almost instantly falls in love. For her part,
Melisande is amused at an unknown soldier of whom she can see only his lower half.
Later, after the buddies have built the shower, Jim spies Melisande coolly appraising his naked
comrades as they bathe, and he shouts at her to go away, but Melisande is no shrinking violet.
From this unlikely beginning, a romance blossoms, despite the efforts of Slim and Bull (once
they're dressed) to cut in, and even though Jim and Melisande can barely understand each other.
Their pantomimed "conversations" are ideal for a medium without recorded sound.
When the regiment is called to the front, Vidor stages what is probably the original of every
subsequent scene in which a beloved left behind runs helplessly after the lover's departing
vehicle. Vidor goes all out, with Melisande desperately seeking Jim among the innumerable army
trucks, heedless of the dust surrounding her, until Jim catches the sound of her voice rising from
the din and jumps down to run back and embrace her. Then an officer drags him back to his unit,
as Melisande clings to him for as long as she can. Few words are needed, and in any case, they
can barely hear each other, let alone understand what the other is saying.
At this point in its original release, with men, guns and machines heading to their confrontation
with the enemy, The Big Parade took an intermission, which has not been included in this Blu-ray presentation. The last hour of the film
shifts into a much darker tone, both thematically and
visually, as Vidor takes his trio of soldiers and their company to war and stages one bravura
sequence after another demonstrating the shock that soldiers experienced when old-fashioned
battlefield tactics encountered the latest in weapons technology. It should be remembered that
The Big Parade appeared just seven years after the war's conclusion. Many in the audience
remembered these experiences and bore their scars.
The most famous and unnerving sequence is the company's advance through Belleau Wood. On
the commentary track, Vidor recounts how his technical advisors protested his staging and
filming techniques for their supposed lack of authenticity, but after the film came out, veterans
told him he'd captured the surreal quality of the experience exactly. As the troop advances
deliberately through the forest, German snipers and machine gun nests pick them off in large
numbers. So well hidden are the German shooters that they cannot be identified and targeted
until they fire, and by then many have fallen. The scene is relentless in its pacing and nightmarish
in its duration.
Nerve-wracking sequences of trench warfare follow, as well as an uncharacteristically showy
mass battle sequence that Vidor did not direct but was added later at Thalberg's request and
directed by George W. Hill (The Big House, 1930). Eventually, though, we end up with a second
"big parade", this time composed of ambulances loaded with dead and wounded. Jim is among
the wounded, and when he regains consciousness in a field hospital, all he can think of is
Melisande. He is still thinking of her when the war ends and he returns home to his parents'
warm welcome. No longer the eager boy who left, Jim is now grim and permanently disabled.
The only prospect that brightens his outlook is the hope of returning to France and finding
Melisande.
Vidor knew how to please the crowd. The Big Parade would never have achieved such success if
he had left Jim Apperson a scarred and bitter member of the Lost Generation so memorably
documented by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises. Vidor allowed his hero a suitably
happy ending marred only by the odd limp over which the camera lingers when Melisande
catches sight of a figure on the horizon, moving in its own peculiar rhythm. (The walk is
supposed to have been copied from author Lawrence Stallings, himself a wounded veteran.) Even
the purest romance must pay its share of war's cost.
Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of The Big Parade is a suitable riposte to anyone who
claims that Warner doesn't "do" catalog films. The spectacular restoration, reportedly taken
directly from the original camera negative, provides a level of clarity and detail that would be
impressive for a film from the early sound era, let alone for a silent film that is now 88 years old.
Blacks are deep, shades of gray are varied, subtle and well-delineated, and the tints used to create
specific moods and distinguish times of day (various blues for night, golden hues for indoors and
dusk outside, a light magenta for the romantic closing sequence) are precise, stable and never
compromise the essentials of the image. A single shot featuring a red cross on the side of an
ambulance gives a hint of the color experiments that lay ahead. (The shot was hand tinted and
individually cut into each print of the film.)
Frames are sometimes missing, and the jumps are noticeable but easily overlooked. Every so
often, the edge of the image will narrow in slightly for a frame or two, then return to the standard
Academy ratio of 1.37:1; this has presumably been done to hide damage beyond the ability of
restoration technology, and it usually passes in the blink of an eye. The film's grain pattern is
intact and exceedingly fine, given the age of the source. The average bitrate of 25.84 Mbps is
sufficient to avoid any compression-related issues, especially given the solid black windowbox
bars at the sides. The commentary urges that The Big Parade should be seen on a big screen, but
the Blu-ray treatment is so good that the film retains a substantial impact even on home video, as
long as the viewer is willing to adapt to the aesthetics of 1925 silent cinema.
The Blu-ray's lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo track contains a recording of the orchestral score
written by Carl Davis in 1988, which incorporates key elements of the film's original score by
William Axt and David Mendoza. A detailed description of Davis' approach is provided in the
accompanying digibook.
The score is superbly reproduced, with precise delineation of the instruments, exceptional
dynamic range, tight bass that is never boomy, and smooth, refined high notes that are never
tiring. Davis' score is a masterly demonstration of just how much storytelling a skillful composer
can supply, especially in the battle sequences, where various percussion instruments fill in the
sounds of weapons' fire, explosions, bullet hits and bodies falling—and often do so with even
greater impact than the actual sound effects might have, because of director King Vidor's
deliberately rhythmic technique for staging and editing the scenes. There is nothing hokey or
dated about Davis' score. It uses themes of the period (e.g., "Over There", "You're in the Army
Now"), but it does so in tight integration with what is happening on the screen. Listening to
Davis' work and watching how carefully it has been coordinated with Vidor's imagery gives one
a new appreciation of the possibilities of film music.
Commentary with Historian Jeffrey Vance (and Director King Vidor): Vidor's
participation occurs through excerpts from his recollections recorded in the 1970s for the
library of the Director's Guild of America. Jeffrey Vance has been an archivist for MGM
and has written books on Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold
Lloyd. He is a frequent commentator for classic films, with valuable contributions to
Rags & Riches: The
Mary Pickford Collection, On Approval and Grand Hotel.
Vance's commentary for The Big Parade is another fine effort, drawn from diverse
sources that he lists at the outset. He ranges freely over the film's long and complex
production history, which included multiple reshoots; the prior and subsequent careers of
the principal participants; the public response and critical reception (both contemporary
and subsequent); the various scores; and the restoration. Vance also describes his own
encounters with the elderly King Vidor and the venerable director's generosity in sharing
his knowledge. Vance introduces the inserted clips from Vidor's entertaining
recollections, recorded some fifty years after he directed the film, on the making of The
Big Parade.
1925 Studio Tour(480i; 1.33:1; 31:59): This silent film tour of the MGM Culver City
studios (today the home of Sony Pictures) is a detailed look at what remained, for many
years, one of the premiere production facilities of Hollywood. It includes a look at every
department and group portraits of all the personnel, including noted stars and directors
who, in today's show business world, would never consent to such corporate treatment.
The source material is in rough shape and is frequently misaligned, but the fact that it has
survived at all is remarkable.
Theatrical Trailer (480i; 1.33:1; 2:29): This trailer was obviously made at some point
after the film's initial release. The text is ironic in its romanticization of war, given
director Vidor's artistic intentions.
Digibook: The disc is packaged inside one of the most detailed digibooks that Warner
has produced to date, with fifty pages of illustrations and detailed text by film scholar
Kevin Brownlow. The text includes a biographical sketch of King Vidor, an overview of
the film's production and a discussion of Carl Davis' score. The last sixteen pages are a
reproduction of an original twenty-five cent program from the film's original release.
Sticklers among the Blu-ray public may note that The Big Parade is technically not part of the
Warner catalog, since it came from the MGM library that Warner acquired in the Nineties. To
that point, I would answer, simply: Amen! Despite reports of its recent recovery, MGM lacks
both the financial wherewithal and, currently, the in-house expertise to undertake a restoration of
the delicacy and magnitude required by a film of this vintage and importance. Warner has
repeatedly demonstrated both its commitment to the American film heritage and the requisite
technical skill to oversee a massive project like The Big Parade. No shortcuts were taken, and the
result speaks (and shows) for itself. Highest recommendation.
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Blu-ray.com and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment are offering three members a chance to win a copy of director King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925), starring John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Karl Dane, Claire Adams, Tom O'Brien, Karl Dane, Hobart Bosworth and Robert Ober. ...
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Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has announced the Blu-ray release of director King Vidor's The Big Parade, starring John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Karl Dane, Claire Adams, Tom O'Brien and Robert Ober. The groundbreaking 1925 silent film classic streets on October ...
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