Ever since @vintagefilmsdarling and @allaboutsilentfilm (Instagram!) shared their beautiful tributes to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927) and King Vidor’s “The Great Parade” (1927), I thought maybe it was time I revisited Vidor’s classic “The Crowd” (1928). Like Lang’s work, I find it a little politically ambiguous but fascinatingly so, an exploration of modern humanity through the realistic portrayal of the white-collar worker in the big city. John Sims is an endearing protagonist with big dreams if only he could have ‘the opportunity.’ He moves to New York, marries a lovely girl, and longs escape the office floor to catch his big break. Life doesn’t seem to run that way for him, as he won’t brownnose his bosses or accept charity job offers, can’t seem to become a jingle-writer. But he still hopes, despite the frequent threat of the swarming, uncaring mobs, so compellingly depicted by Vidor (there’s a little sharp German Expressionism in the way he paints his metaphoric physical settings).
An intertitle solemnly warns, ‘We do not know how big the crowd is, and what opposition is… until we get out of step with it.’ For one giddy moment, an unexpected prize promises to change their lives, but a tragic accident leaves John broken, disenchanted, unable to hold down jobs (an interesting pre-Depression insight when he becomes a door-to-door salesman and mourns that everyone already has a vacuum cleaner). For all their struggles though, things are ‘swell’ in John’s domestic life as his wife and son still love him, so he swallows his pride and ironically takes the place of a sandwich-board man he once mocked, advertising someone else’s slogan. And now he and his wife can enjoy the theatre together, laughing with the crowd. The film is meant to be neither tragedy or triumph, but it’s hard to forget the sad scene with John painfully pushing against an unfeeling crowd after he loses his kid. Maybe though, he realises that his ship has already come in, in having people to love Xo
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