It was wonderful, as it always is, seeing The Big Parade on the big screen yesterday. It's quite the epic silent film, clocking in at two and a half hours. But it's a remarkable piece of work and that time flew by for me.
I particularly like this score by Carl Davis. As I understand it, this is one of the silents that had an entire orchestral score written for it. I need to learn the status of that, but apparently Davis based much of his score on that original music, and it's actually my favorite of his.
The acting for the most part seems quite sophisticated. Something I like about this one is that there are a few lengthy "conversational" scenes during which no titles interrupt the proceedings. You can tell perfectly well what the characters are communicating to each other, and director King Vidor seems to have trusted in his actors and in the script enough to allow it to play out without the many interruptions prevalent in other films.
