The Big Parade

King Vidor's searing World War I epic — the highest-grossing film of 1925 and the movie that proved war films could be both spectacular and deeply personal. John Gilbert plays a wealthy, aimless young man who enlists with his two working-class buddies, ships out to France, falls in love with a French girl, and discovers that war is nothing like the patriotic parade he imagined. The film's genius is in its pacing: Vidor takes his time with the camaraderie, the boredom, the small pleasures of military life, so that when the devastating battle sequences arrive, they hit with the force of a body blow. The extended sequence of soldiers marching through a forest under bombardment is one of the most harrowing depictions of combat in any war film, and Gilbert's transformation from carefree playboy to shell-shocked veteran is quietly devastating.