Sunday, 5 July 2009
7:30 PM
The Crowd (1928)
starring James Murray and Eleanor Boardman
The Crowd (1928) is a genuine, immortal, timeless American silent film masterpiece from director King Vidor. This experimental, social commentary film was remarkably different from other feature films of its time because of its non-Hollywood reflection of daily life. In fact, it's considered one of the first arthouse films made by a major studio. Talking about this film, MGM production boss Irving Thalberg once said that every so often a studio should make a great movie it knows will lose money. The Crowd is about an average Joe's struggles through life starting with his birth on the Fourth of July, 1900. It shows him in childhood, talking about how he's going to be a big man someday, then it takes up his life as an adult as he tries to make it in New York. One of the virtues of The Crowd is that it's not what you expect — it's about an everyday guy without much drive or talent who goes through life thinking he's a world-beater. Miss that point and you miss the beauty of what Vidor does with the film. What's extraordinary is that what could have come off as a case study instead packs a consistently strong emotional punch. At the same time, the location filming in New York, rare in its day, gives a flavor of urban life 80 years ago.