The Big Parade

The Big Parade is a 1925 American silent war drama film directed by King Vidor, starring John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Hobart Bosworth, Tom O'Brien, and Karl Dane. Written by World War I veteran Laurence Stallings, the film is about an idle rich boy who joins the U.S. Army's Rainbow Division, is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes a friend of two working-class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl. A sound version of the film was released in 1930. While the sound version of the film has no audible dialog, it featured a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film has been praised for its realistic depiction of warfare, and it heavily influenced a great many subsequent war films, especially All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). The Big Parade is regarded as one of the greatest films made about World War I, and, in 1992, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.