King Vidor's stunning antiwar film is one of the classics of silent cinema. Containing realistic, remarkably staged battle sequences and moments of rare powerful drama, The Big Parade follows the enlistment and service of an American soldier (silent-screen great John Gilbert) who fights in France in the First World War. Though made in the early years of American filmmaking, Vidor has a superior command of the medium, creating scenes that are not only brilliantly constructed but achingly intimate and disturbing. Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory is said to have been influenced by Vidor's masterpiece.