The Big Parade

John Gilbert stars in the highest-grossing movie of the silent era--the most popular blockbuster until the release of Gone With the Wind fifteen years later--as a young man drawn into the fervor of patriotism and war, The Big Parade. Jim (Gilbert), the young scion of the wealthy Apperson family, surprises his family when he is swept up in a military parade of GIs leaving for World War I--and enlists in the army. In France he befriends two other GIs and falls in love with pretty young Melisande (Renée Adorée) during a lull before he goes to the front. But once Jim sees his first battle, he's horrified as, one-by-one, his friends are picked off by enemy rifles while they march through a forest. Unlike his friends, Jim survives the war, losing a leg and his innocence. Unable to adjust to life at home, Jim returns to post-war France to search for Melisande, not knowing if she is alive or dead.