The Crowd (1928)

The American Dream, in Fine Print - The Crowd review by griggs

“Make films about the people, they said, but The Crowd had already been made, so why remake it?” — Jean-Luc Godard

Silent films can sometimes feel like museum pieces you’re meant to admire politely. This one doesn’t. The Crowd feels surprisingly modern — not because it’s showy, but because King Vidor keeps landing big ideas in small, familiar moments: a look across a kitchen table, a jaw tightening mid-compromise.

He shoots 1920s America like a shiny promise with something predatory underneath — all that Roaring Twenties optimism and progress talk, with the cracks already showing. The camera glides, snoops, then suddenly pulls back until John Sims (James Murray) is just another unit in the pattern. That overhead office shot — endless rows of desks — is an image that sticks. Then Vidor snaps you back in close, where dreams get quietly resized to fit the rent.

Eleanor Boardman is the anchor: not swoony romance, but marriage as it actually works — snipes, bargains, and affection that survives because someone keeps turning up. And that ending: a gut-punch, and somehow a weird little comfort too.

One gripe: the Muzak-y soundtrack on the version I watched was truly grim.

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Silent Melodrama (spoiler). - The Crowd review by Steve

Legendary silent drama which tells the story of the anonymous face in the crowd. James Murray plays the ordinary man who lives a life of small triumphs but larger disappointments. Fate is either indifferent or cruel, leading to a genuine tragedy which destroys him.

We are introduced by one of the most famous edits in cinema, as the 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. And the film concludes with an equally celebrated shot... 

 His life is ostentatiously ordinary. He goes to Coney Island, meets a girl and gets married and honeymoons in Niagara Falls... gradually he is robbed of his assumption of personal exceptionalism and absorbs conformity. The production was shot on the streets of New York, among real crowds. It surely anticipates neo-realism. There is quite a lot of The Bicycle Thieves in this.

It's easy to identify with Murray, who went into the production as an extra. King Vidor's visual storytelling is impressive, and while he doesn't eschew pathos, it feels realistic. Any Hollywood film maker who attempts to reflect the everyday experiences of ordinary people in the big city, does so in the shadow of this cinematic landmark.