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.