The Crowd - Vidor, 1928

I'm a big King Vidor fan. No one is better at combining realism with heart-tugging sentimentalism. He gave us great films such as The Big Parade (8), Street Scene (8), The Champ (7), Our Daily Bread (7), and Stella Dallas (8). He directed films from 1913 to 1959. And even some of his post-prime, later films, such as Ruby Gentry (6), still have that interesting mix of gritty realism and emotional symbolism.

And to my mind, The Crowd is his best film. I've seen it three or four times and come away impressed each time. First off, you have some absolutely amazing location shots of New York City. The scenes where they are riding around on the bus are unlike any I've seen in movies of that era. And the long tracking shot of New York City into the office building filled with a screenful of symmetrical desks is a perfect example of Vidor's eye for artistic symbolism. In this case, the theme is alienation and relationship of the individual to the "crowd". The protagonist has high hope to set himself apart and above the throng, but is hopelessly not up to the task.

Another notable aspect of The Crowd is its realism. Whether the characters are in their tiny apartment, or at the beach, or on a boat, you feel that they are behaving pretty much exactly how you would expect them to in real life. This is supposedly the first movie to depict a toilet flushing (BTW, Hitchcock's Psycho, made 32 years later, is often, absurdly given this distinction!), in a scene where the couple has a domestic squabble. And many, including the MGM studio head, considered that obscene at the time!

Also significant is the complex and tragic plot. Just when it looks like things are going to turn around for this guy (just as it does in so many Hollywood films, where his ship magically comes in and everything is fine after that) the protagonist is instead dealt a crushing blow. Yet unlike simple tragedies, where the ending is a simple nose-dive from there, we are instead left with a bittersweet, semi-tragic, semi-hopeful ending, that is truly poignant.

Vidor purposely used unknowns for the lead characters, in an effort to preserve the feeling of a realistic everyman/woman. It worked then, as the film was both a critical and box office success, and it holds up very well today. The Crowd got two Oscar nominations for Best Picture (actually, in those days, there were two Best Picture categories, one for Production, and the other for "Unique and Artistic Production", and this film was nominated for the latter) and also for Best Direction (likewise, there were two categories, one for comedy and one for drama). Vidor lost to the capable Frank Borzage (who, ironically, also directed from 1913-1959!) and his now largely forgotten 7th Heaven. And The Crowd lost out to Murnau's masterful Sunrise (9), perhaps the only other movie of those years in the same league as The Crowd.

A 9 rating.