La petite parade

I saw this very amusing film in October 2007 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone; the annual festival has made a welcome return to that town after eight years in nearby Sacile ... a town no less beautiful, but in Sacile the festival's programme was split between two smaller cinemas at opposite ends of the town, thus forcing me (and other attendees) to hustle back and forth from one screening to another.

The print screened at Pordenone was loaned by collector Martin Starewitch -- a French-born grandson of the film's Polish-born director -- restored from a (silent) nitrate print in Nederlands Filmmuseum.

'The Little Parade' undoubtedly delighted French audiences when it was first released in 1928, not least for its title ... coming soon after the European release of MGM's huge hit 'The Big Parade'. Six weeks after its original French release, a second version of 'The Little Parade' was released with a synchronised audio track of sound effects.

Here we have a 'trick' film, and of course anyone familiar with silent films will at once be put in mind of Georges Melies, the master of early cinema trickery. However, Melies's films relied very heavily on the jump cut, which enabled objects and people to vanish, appear and instantaneously change positions in the frame. 'The Little Parade' relies on a larger repertory of cinema illusions. Also, there's more story in this film than in a typical Melies short: 'The Little Parade' is adapted from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier'.

Mirrors are cleverly used here to make the actors on screen seem magically to multiply, so that one soldier becomes a vast platoon.

One of the annoying things about the sound revolution that changed cinema was the fact that audiences were so eager for sound that ANY movie which talked (no matter how bad it was otherwise) became far more profitable for exhibitors than any film which didn't talk (such as this one) even if it included sound effects. 'The Little Parade' had the misfortune to be made just before the talkies changed everything, and consequently this delightful movie (along with many other wonderful silents) was swept out of the public consciousness and into oblivion. Fortunately, it has now been restored. I'll rate 'The Little Parade' 9 out of 10. It's an excellent film which owes nothing (except its title) to King Vidor's 'The Big Parade', but when a movie has a parody title I can't quite bring myself to consider it the equal of the film which its parodic title is based upon ... and 'The Big Parade' is a definite 10 out of 10.