King Vidor received five Academy Award nominations for directing between 1927 and 1956. He was the recipient of an Honorary Award in 1978 for "his incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator." The Big Parade, made two years before the founding of the Academy, certainly must be counted among those "incomparable achievements."
One of the first pictures to go into production after the formation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, this moving WWI story was MGM's largest grossing film until the release of Gone with the Wind fourteen years later.
Following a serious vault fire at the studio in the 1960s, MGM's Film Library records listed the negative for this film as "destroyed." Miraculously, however, the negative had survived, and was rediscovered recently by visiting film scholar Kevin Brownlow at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, where all the studio's nitrate negatives were relocated following the fire.
Richard May of Warner Bros. was able to use this 80-year-old negative for the restoration, incorporating modern technical capabilities to recreate the original color tinting used at the time of the film's release. Presented with a live orchestral performance of the original score, this screening promises to be an "incomparable" experience.
Starring: John Gilbert, Renée Adorée, Hobart Bosworth, Claire McDowell, Claire Adams, Robert Ober, Tom O'Brien, Karl Dane, Rosita Marstini. Directed by King Vidor. Story by Laurence Stallings. Screenplay by Harry Behn. Titles by Joseph Farnham. Cinematography by John Arnold. Art Direction by James Basevi, Cedric Gibbons. Film Editing by Hugh Wynn. Original Music by William Axt, David Mendoza. Costume Design by Ethel P. Chaffin. M-G-M, 1925. Running Time: 128 minutes. 35mm. Print courtesy of Warner Bros.
