The Crowd (1928)
- General info
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- Synopsis:
- Young John Sims (James Murray) weathers the death of his father and travels to New York City in search of success. Instead, he becomes a low-level worker in an enormous office of a nameless corporation. After he meets a beautiful young woman (Eleanor Boardman), things seem to be looking up, but before long the newlyweds are sullen and bickering, and the arrival of their children leaves John feeling trapped in a dead-end existence. Then tragedy strikes, causing him to reassess his life.
- Actors:
- Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark, Daniel G. Tomlinson, Dell Henderson, Lucy Beaumont, Freddie Burke Frederick, Alice Mildred Puter, Sidney Bracey, Johnny Downs, Sally Eilers, Joseph W. Girard, Chris-Pin Martin, Claude Payton, Warner Richmond, Virginia Sale, Larry Steers
- Directors:
- King Vidor
- Writers:
- King Vidor, John V.A. Weaver
- Others:
- King Vidor
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
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Reviews (1) of The Crowd
Silent Melodrama. - The Crowd review by Steve
Legendary production relates the story of the ordinary man, the anonymous face in the crowd. John Sims (James Murray) lives a life of small triumphs but larger disappointments. Fate is either indifferent or cruel, leading to a genuine tragedy which destroys him and exposes his vulnerability.
We are introduced to the character by one of the most famous shots in cinema, as Vidor's camera tracks up the numberless windows of a huge skyscraper and locks in on one opening in particular. It dissolves into an office interior with a vast number of geometrically positioned desks and locates by degrees the subject of the story. The film concludes with another legendary edit: the suffering man and his wife and son are laughing at clowns on a stage and the camera pulls back to reveal a huge auditorium of guffawing people and reduces him once again to a stranger.
His life is ostentatiously ordinary. He goes to Coney Island, meets a girl and gets married and honeymoons on Niagara Falls... gradually he is robbed of his assumption of personal exceptionalism and absorbs conformity. The production was shot on location in New York City using real crowds. Aside from employing actors rather than amateurs (though James Murray was plucked from a cast of extras) the film surely anticipates neo-realism. There is quite a lot of The Bicycle Thieves in The Crowd.
The visual storytelling is impressive, and while the film doesn't eschew pathos, it feels very believable. It's easy to identify with this everyman. Any Hollywood film which attempts to reflect the everyday experiences of ordinary people in the big city does so in the shadow of King Vidor's The Crowd.