So much average

Fantastic!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I had wanted to see "The Crowd," King Vidor's silent classic about navigating the anonymity of big-city American life, forever, but couldn't ever find it. It finally aired again on TCM and I got a chance to see it for myself. What a marvelous film, a perfect example of a silent film director knowing how to use a purely visual medium for utmost impact.I've seen people debating the ending and whether it's happy or not. Apparently Vidor picked it out of six or so other options under pressure from the studio to end the film happily. But I think this was a case of a director subversively appearing to accommodate the demands of a studio while sticking to his guns. I personally did not feel like the ending of "The Crowd" was happy. Sure, we see the protagonist and his wife and surviving child laughing happily with others in a movie theater, but was I the only one who found the rows and rows of patrons, mechanically bobbing up and down like automatons, slightly disturbing?"The Crowd" received two Academy Award nominations in the institution's debut year: Unique and Artistic Picture and Best Director (Dramatic Picture). The first award went to "Sunrise" (can't argue with that) while the second went to Frank Borzage (which I can).Grade: A

This is one of my favorite silents. It is a simple story told with great images and cinematography, which was SURELY enhanced by the film score in the fully restored version that I saw on TCM. First, one notices the un-presumptuous images which could be as 'American Pie' as a Normal Rockwell painting. This IS the story of the American dream—as well as many of its trials and tribulation. One almost views this movie as a voyeur of John's dreams as well as his problems.This intimate view of the movie character is what makes some movies so great! It is the 'letting us IN' to actively relate to the characters and 'go on the same ride' that they are going on. Many of the images show great spatial perspective as when the camera moves in on the giant buildings of NYC, its masses of people (that has a rhythm of its own), the overhead shots of John's office, the rides at the amusement park (Cony Island?), etc. In the amusement park shots, there is also a beautiful light show of the circles, arcs, and arches that are made by the night lighting of the rides. Another example of great imaging is the powerful view of Niagara Falls, as John (James Murray) and Mary (Eleanor Boardman) climb a nearby hill during their honeymoon? We can almost hear its powerful sound and feel its mist!! There is a feeling that they are starting an adventure that is bigger than they can possibly imagine. But, as in all adventures, there must be some sadness and problems, so we are shown some of them too. The movie, when seen from another view, might also be a subtle indictment of 'modern society,' where men are only seen as cogs in a huge impersonal machine, ant on an anthill—OR numbers at a desk—John IS 137. It is interesting how the story moves in and out, from the personal to the impersonal. Of course, Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times was a full-out satire on that subject.

King Vidor must have had good standing with the powers that be at MGM, because as a director in the studio era he seemed to get to pick and shape his assignments more than most directors of that time.King Vidor made this film to be an artistic achievement, even recruiting unknown actor James Murray - a member of "the crowd" you might say - to play the male lead, all with MGM approval. Murray plays John Sims, a representative everyman who all through life, up to the end of the film thinks he is going to beat "the crowd" and be somebody. He is born July 4, 1900 with his father saying "the world is going to hear from this boy". Unfortunately, John's dad dies when he is 12, and at 21 John heads to New York to make his success. He starts out at a desk amid hundreds of other desks doing simple mathematical clerical work for an insurance company - work that decades ago was replaced by computers. Unfortunately, John's career not only starts there, it ends there too, with only one 8 dollar raise in six years to show for it. What really stings is that John's playboy coworker Bert (Bert Roach) works his way up into management even though they both started work there at about the same time.In one of his rare pieces of luck John does meet a girl (Eleanor Boardman as Mary) that he loves and who loves him back for what he is, not what he says he'll be. When John finally does win some kind of recognition - he wins a 500 dollar prize for coming up with the name for a new cleanser - it ultimately becomes the instrument of destruction for his entire family and any drive he has left.The ending looks like it's a happy one - after John quits his job and can't make it at any other job he finds, almost losing Mary in the process, he finally resigns himself to accepting and keeping any job - one that he ridiculed when he first came to New York seven years before. The final scene has John and family enjoying a night of fun at the local vaudeville house in celebration of his new job, menial though it is, laughing with an auditorium full of people. What has really happened though is that John has finally surrendered his dream and is now happy being just one of the crowd - a bittersweet ending in my humble opinion.This film blends vintage scenes of old New York of the 20's with themes anyone can relate to today - the drive to succeed, the likelihood that most by definition will not, beauty being in the eye of the beholder, and trying to hold a family together after a tragic and sudden loss. I highly recommend this wonderful film.

The most remarkable thing about 'The Crowd (1928)' is that is manages to cover so much emotional ground. John (James Murray) is a young man who knew from an early age that he would become somebody special, that he would stand out from the crowd. At age 21, he travels to New York, the towering metropolis introduced via a montage of impressive high- angled shots that resemble Robert Florey's 'Skyscraper Symphony (1929).' John joins the accounting sector of a large insurance firm, and studiously assures himself that he need only work his way up. Years pass. John marries, has two children. It takes him five years to realise that he has become what he swore never to become: a member of The Crowd.Vidor's message is a double-edged sword. Early in the film, The Crowd is something to be loathed: the camera, in a virtuoso display of technical brilliance, swoops down upon a seemingly-endless room of seated accountants, each man turning pages in mechanical unison. (Billy Wilder later paid homage to this scene in 'The Apartment (1960)'). But when John finally determines to break free from The Crowd, his world falls apart around him – he can't maintain a job, his wife threatens to leave him, he loses his dignity. The film's ending is intriguing in its ambiguity: John is absorbed into the crowds of a laughing theatre audience.Is it a happy ending, an embracing of conformity? Is it ironic, an acknowledgment of mass delusion? Is Vidor integrating his character into the cinema audience? In 'The Bicycle Thief (1948),' a similar disappearance into the crowd is viewed as tragic, but here I'm not so sure. F.W. Murnau's 'The Last Laugh (1924)' told a similar tale, depicting the bleak prospects of a working-class doorman, played by Emil Jannings. UFA studio thwarted that film by enforcing a ludicrous happy ending that Murnau included only with a snide introductory title card. M-G-M also toyed with a happy ending to 'The Crowd,' but fortunately Vidor's version ultimately won out, a conclusion genuinely unsettling in its uncertainty, and sure to inspire discussion.