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. Adapted by Harry Behn from the autobiographical novel Plumes by Laurence Stallings, with titles by Joseph W. Farnham, the film is about an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and 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. Although other anti-war films chronologically preceded it, The Big Parade is nevertheless an early film to have neither glorified the war nor ignored its human costs. It heavily influenced a great many subsequent war films, especially All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). In 1992, The Big Parade was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".