- San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2005: Among the highlights are the restored print of King Vidor’s blockbuster The Big Parade; Victor Sjöström’s adaptation of The Scarlet Letter; and two non-Hollywood rarities: Sangue Mineiro from Brazil, and Prem Sanyas from India.
San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2005 to present restored print of King Vidor’s WWI blockbuster The Big Parade
Next weekend, July 8–10, the 10th San Francisco Silent Film Festival will open with a screening of the 1926 Harold Lloyd comedy For Heaven’s Sake, directed by Sam Taylor and featuring Lloyd’s most frequent leading woman of the 1920s, Jobyna Ralston.
The highlight of this year’s San Francisco festival, however, is the restored, tinted print of the biggest domestic blockbuster of the silent era, The Big Parade (1925), which will be screened at 7:45 p.m. on Saturday.
Directed by future five-time Academy Award nominee King Vidor (The Crowd, 1927–1928; Hallelujah, 1929–1930; etc.), this classic antiwar drama stars >John Gilbert as a World War I doughboy who finds sweet love and stomach-churning atrocities while “fighting for his country” on French soil.
Gilbert’s local romantic interest is played by Renée Adorée, who delivers a sensational performance. Indeed, the scene in which she runs after the doughboys’ truck on its way to the front remains one of the most famous and most heart-wrenching in cinema history.
Also in the cast: Claire McDowell as Gilbert’s mother (that same year, McDowell played another distraught mom – Ramon Novarro’s – in another mega-blockbuster, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ), Hobart Bosworth as his father, Kathleen Key as his sister (also Novarro’s sister in Ben-Hur), Karl Dane, Claire Adams, and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad leading woman Julanne Johnston.
Scenario credited to Harry Behn, from a screen story by future Writers Guild of America nominee Laurence Stallings (in the Best American Western category for She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 1949). Titles by future Academy Award winner Joseph W. Farnham (in the Best Title Writing category for unspecified movies*, 1927–1928).
* Past reports had Farnham officially winning for three features: The Fair Co-Ed; Laugh, Clown, Laugh; and Telling the World.
More San Francisco Silent Film Festival offerings
Highlights among the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s other screenings include the following:
- Allan Dwan’s Stage Struck (1925) at 3:20 p.m. on Saturday. This middling comedy stars Gloria Swanson and features scenes in two-strip Technicolor. Also in the cast: Lawrence Gray, Gertrude Astor, and Ford Sterling.
- Victor Sjöström’s The Scarlet Letter (1926) at 4 p.m. on Sunday. Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson are in top form in this compelling – and ever timely – big-screen version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel about intolerance and religious extremism. Also in the cast: Gish’s The Birth of a Nation leading man Henry B. Walthall, The Big Parade’s Karl Dane, and Marcelle Corday.
- Clarence Badger’s It (1927) at 8 p.m. on Sunday. Based on Elinor Glyn’s serialized novella, this inconsequential romantic comedy is worth a look as a star vehicle for “It Girl” Clara Bow. Also in the cast: Antonio Moreno, Priscilla Bonner, a pre-stardom Gary Cooper, and Elinor Glyn as herself.
Silent Brazilian and Indian rarities
On the foreign front, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will be presenting a couple of notable titles:
- Humberto Mauro’s Brazilian high-society drama Sangue Mineiro (1930; a.k.a. Blood of Minas Gerais) at 1:15 p.m. on Saturday. Under the direction of the unofficial Father of Brazilian Cinema, Portuguese-born diva Carmen Santos stars as a woman – part-vamp, part-victim – in the throes of unbridled passions.
- Franz Osten and Himansu Rai’s German-Indian epic Prem Sanyas (1925; a.k.a. The Light of Asia) at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday. Based on Edwin Arnold’s 1879 book, the film chronicles the life of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Co-director Himansu Rai stars as the prince.
“San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2005: Restored Blockbuster” notes
King Vidor receives Honorary Oscar
At the 1979 Academy Awards ceremony – 54 years after The Big Parade – King Vidor was given an Honorary Academy Award for his “incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator.”
San Francisco Silent Film Festival website.
John Gilbert and Renée Adorée The Big Parade image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
“San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2005: Restored Blockbuster” last modified in November 2025.