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Powerful

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely brilliant

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

John (James Murray) and Mary (Eleanor Boardman - Mrs Vidor) are two, faces in the crowd. They meet, they get married, they have children. A common story. But in the cinema, nothing is common.We are more interested in John. He is a good little boy full of promises. He will become someone important. Unless… Unless his father dies, which happens when he is 12. Now we switch the figures. John is 21. He lands in New York convinced he is different and will tame this city. Meanwhile, he works as an accountant in an insurance company. But he studies at night, to become – still – someone important. One evening, his friend Bert (Bert Roach) invites him to Coney Island with two girls. At first, he refuses but in the end, he accepts. There, he meets Mary. They kiss in the Tunnel of Love. They are soon to get married. Despite Bert's pessimism, their marriage lasts. They have two kids. One day, John has a brilliant idea for an advertisement. He gets 500 dollars. He calls his children to celebrate this great moment. This is when Fate intervenes: their little girl gets run over by a car. Misfortunes will multiply, and John will have to fight the Crowd of those who did not want to be different.This film by King Vidor is not what we call a joyful film. It is very different from what the MG was offering to the movie audiences. Showing normal people was not a very good marketing product. It was not well accepted to show ordinary people and a sad ending. Therefore, Vidor held on and this ending is one of the nine endings which were shot. This is the least sad ending (the least bad ending?): John does not reach his goal. He will never be someone important. Just a face in the crowd, among many (many, many…) others. This is why the film is very interesting. We can see a quick romance. Quick, because the whole society demands it. everything goes fast: cars, trains and people going to work. Therefore, people have very little time for themselves, or to build something. The crowd is a huge wave which overwhelms everything. The peak hours are a moment which show this very well. When the clock strikes the end of the day's work, you can see crowds of people rushing to the elevators or the undergrounds alone or as couples. But John just want one thing: being different. He feels superior to the others. He thinks he has a mission, a great purpose. And this feeling starts irritating the others. He even mocks the poor guys who have to juggle to make (a bit of) a living, advertising for a restaurant. But would he have mock them if he had known that one day, he would have to do the same thing? As soon as John enters New York, things are different. Vidor picks up a building, the camera travels from bottom to the top, stops in front of a window, and then enters: desks, desks, desks... Hundreds of them! So he goes on, forward, to one desk: John Sim, 137. And he takes this man - a face in this desk crowd - and brings him to the light. We are going to learn everything which makes him a man: his life, his dreams, his wife, his kids, his (step) family... And his misfortunes! (Vidor will recall the emotion of the little girl's death in another movie - Hallelujah - when another child dies) Even if this child brings him his misfortune, the other brings him anew hope: he is completely desperate, on the brink of suicide when he realizes that his other child LOVES him. His son wishes to become like him! This was what he needed. Now we know he will get better and better. But to get better, he will have to accept to be just a member of the society like anyone else, and therefore be just a face in the crowd. And he accepts it. The story is over. The camera goes backwards revealing us the crowd of people around him, again and again, till he disappears in this overwhelming crowd. Vidor has put him back where he originally belonged.

After hearing and seeing so many references to the genius of Vidor's "The Crowd", I was anxious to appreciate all it's glory.Not a disappointment, he cleverly utilizes Ninja camera tactics unparalleled in it's time and for many years to come. I found it fascinating that NYC even then, was so extremely crowded and the traffic horrific with both horse and automobile competing for lanes. The traffic cop was a very busy and quite agitated man, yielding no stop signs or lights, but yet averts complete chaos. Portraying Mr. Sims as smug, privileged and above everyone else, we quickly realize he is obviously delusional. This trait was never more aptly portrayed at the family get together on Coney Island Beach. He sings joyfully how he is all alone, strumming his ukulele (zither??) while Mother builds a fire, cooks bacon and protects a frosted cake (!) while the children run amok. What happened to the typical simple picnic of sandwiches and cookies in the middle of all that sand? It was a noxious scene but alluded to Sim's total lack of responsibility and shirking of family duties.So many dreams and opportunities lost but the ending, uplifting. Be aware the themes tackled here are extremely rare in silent films so try to look for the bright spots.High recommend for the phenomenal glimpse of NYC in the 20's and the raw talent of a handsome extra.

The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928) I couldn't help but compare the marriage storyline in The Crowd to the one in Murnau's Sunrise, which I also recently watched. There is an impressive realistic approach taken to both. John and Mary in The Crowd run the full gamut from flirtation to tenderness to irritation to alienation, and back again. The first half hour is mostly lighthearted, but later takes some serious turns that are all the more affecting for having been preceded by the comedic touches of some of the early scenes. John shows a lot of arrogance without the ambition to back it up, which of course comes around to bite him eventually. I was not prepared for a certain tragic event, and it stunned me a little. Vidor does a great job depicting the anonymity that can often be found in the workplace, especially when you see rows upon rows of men in suits working at identical desks. Some have said that The Crowd has a downbeat ending, but I would have to disagree: to me it is just about the most positive ending that could follow from the events of the film. If you enjoy silent movies, you must see this wonderful comedy-drama from the days just before the talkie took over for good. 9/10

It's often said of silent pictures that they reached the pinnacle of their expression at the very moment that they were made obsolete. This is something that can never be proved, since no-one can know where the medium would have gone had talkies not come along in the late 1920s. It is true however that this period saw a number of cinematically perfect motion pictures, which can be regarded today as classics in the same manner that great novels or musical symphonies can. The Crowd, a deceptively simple tale, is among the most exceptionally lovely.The story, by director King Vidor and John Weaver, is a poignant tale of one man's eventual acceptance that, while he may never be a great man in the conventional sense, he is a hero to his family. The Crowd is not however one of those great captivating works of screen writing that would be excellent however it was done. Almost all of its appeal comes through the way Vidor has realised it. This man is just so good at coming up with the simplest ways of expressing a familiar concept. At the first scene of the protagonist's birth the moment is carried by a long shot of the proud father – keying us in not to the event itself but to the emotions involved. Throughout, Vidor is framing incidents against the backdrop of the big city, the huge buildings and masses of people. Towards the end there is even a shot of John Sims making his way through a massive cemetery. Despite the small scope of the story this large canvas gives the movie an almost epic feel, and grants the little story its sense of far-reaching importance.Vidor was of course a master of cinematic technique, but unlike some of the very showy directors of this time (such as F.W. Murnau) he seeks to wind his camera trickery into the physical logic of the action. So for example one of the most obtrusive angles is the upward tilt on the trolleybus steps, but this is from John's point-of-view, so it makes sense. A little after this we get the most obtrusive camera movement, as we swoop down the slide, but again this is following the characters. The attention-grabbing nature of these shots is important because it gives the right tone to the romantic Coney Island visit, but Vidor does it in such a way that we are focused on the people in the story and not the technical wizardry behind it. Of course, there is the one very famous shot travelling shot going up the skyscraper, but this works because it is a linking piece of narrative. Every time the characters are on the screen, it is all about them.Vidor deliberately cast two small time players in the lead roles. While James Murray and Eleanor Boardman are not exactly exceptional actors, they work well here because of their capacity for realism and their inherent likability, and their lack of star quality actually enhances their ordinariness. Murray for example is a funny guy, but he is not funny like a comedian, he's funny in the way that someone one knows and works with might be a bit of a joker. Boardman had more experience that Murray and is somewhat more the professional actress, but it is her tenderness and restraint which shines through here, and her rapport with Murray appears strong.So, The Crowd is an immaculate piece of silent storytelling. However this does not necessarily make it the relic of a now-extinct art form. Motion pictures did not change so much when the talkies arrived, and the techniques that King Vidor perfected here would stand him in good stead for some very fine movies well into the sound era. Cinema is all about making images speak to us in universal tongues. Sound would add another layer to the mix, but with images as powerful this it would detract nothing.