The Big Parade (1925) on Netflix
Wealthy idler Jim Apperson joins the Army when America enters World War I, prompted by a send-off parade. In France he befriends two working-class soldiers and meets Melisande.
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- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb7.9/107,930 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
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Plot summary
Jim Apperson, the idle son of a wealthy businessman, draws his father's displeasure, unlike his hardworking brother. When America enters World War I, Jim tells his worried mother he has no plans to enlist, and his father threatens to put him out of the house. A patriotic send-off parade changes his mind, and he joins the Army, making his father proud. In training he befriends Slim, a construction worker from the South, and Bull, a Bronx bartender. Their unit ships to France and is billeted on a farm at Champillon in the Marne, where Melisande lives with her mother. All three men are drawn to her, and she turns their advances away at first. Over chewing gum she warms to Jim, and the two fall in love without a shared language.
Cast
- Carl Roupas Doughboy (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Big Parade (1925)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When the film's producers found a clause in King Vidor's contract entitling him to 20% of the net profits, studio lawyers called a meeting where accountants upgraded the picture's costs and downgraded their forecast of its success, persuading Vidor to sell his stake before he could collect.
- Made on a budget of $382,000, the film returned MGM a profit of $3.4 million, its biggest of the silent era, and domestic earnings that stood as the studio's record until Gone with the Wind in 1939.
- The Big Parade won the Photoplay Magazine Medal for best film of the year in 1925, an award considered the first significant annual movie award, coming before the establishment of the Oscars.
- The film's release in some nations of the British Empire was initially held up to resolve claims that, by focusing only on America's part in the war, it amounted to propaganda.
- The Big Parade heavily influenced a great many later war films, most notably All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).
- Composer Carl Davis wrote a new orchestral score for the film in the 1980s, quoting the theme associated with Melisande from William Axt's original 1930 setting, and the original 1930 35mm negative was later found intact.
- The film played continually in some larger cities for a year or more, boosting Gilbert's career and making Renée Adorée a major star.
