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The Big Parade
Topic Started: Oct 15 2013, 02:19 PM (363 Views)
panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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If you never get another silent on Blu, get this one. First of all it's a great movie, but more than that, it's a movie that has been preserved as it should have been. Weird coincidence -- there was a dupe made from the original negative for release during the early sound era, and the real original silent negative survived too. Both were in the George Eastman House. Somebody mislabeled the cans, so the real negative lay fallow for more than 80 years while the other one deteriorated from having prints struck off. How 'bout that? Plus, it's one of King Vidor's best, maybe the very best (the competition is The Crowd, which does not survive in such good shape). and was a huge. huge popular to boot, running nearly two years in New York. Panzer's highest recommendation ever.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Frank Hale
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I was glad finally to see this important film, and in such a nice print, but I gave it only a B plus.

Mostly it's the first half: I know we're supposed to come to care about the lead characters before we see the horrors of war, but I found a lot of the various comedy / romance business pretty tedious. And I think it would be correct to say I've never been a Karl Dane fan.

The battle scenes are, of course, very effective. It was something of a shock to see how closely Lewis Milestone copied the bomb crater episode just a few years later in All Quiet.

So, on the whole, well worth a look, just a bit disappointing after reading about the film for years.

And to segue slightly: We were discussing John Gilbert's downfall a while back on some other thread. He is certainly effective in this picture, which makes his subsequent crash that much more poignant.

After seeing a few of his sound films in the last year or so, I've decided that what really did him in, even more than his fight with Louis, was simply that he started seeming old-fashioned. The public of the Depression was ready for the new guys, the Clark Gables, James Cagneys, and Robert Montgomerys.
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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I think you're right about Gilbert -- that Mayer story is most improbable -- but I still wonder what people saw in Montgomery.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Oct 29 2013, 07:30 PM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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