Main Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach, Daniel G. Tomlinson, Dell Henderson
Release Year: 1928
Country: US
Run Time: 104 minutes
Plot
As was the case with every film project that he cared deeply about, filmmaker King Vidor had to fight long and hard with his studio bosses to get The Crowd produced. Though Vidor's parent studio MGM was certain that this simple story of everyday people would take a bath at the box-office, the film earned back twice its cost. The story concentrates on John Sims, brilliantly played by James Murray, an extra boosted to stardom by Vidor. Born on the fourth of July in the year 1900, John convinced that he's destined to be a man of importance. 27 years later, however, Sims is merely one of the faceless crowd, an underpaid clerk in a huge New York office building. On a blind date, John meets Mary (Eleanor Boardman), a likeable if not overly attractive young lady (Boardman, the wife of director Vidor, balked at the notion of departing from her usual glamorous roles; Vidor prevailed, and as a result the actress delivered what is now considered her finest performance). John and Mary are eventually married, raising two children in their tiny New York tenement (complete with a balky toilet-the first time that this particular bathroom fixture ever appeared in an American film). As John's dreams of glory go unfulfilled, he becomes bitter and argumentative, while Mary grows old before her time. Just when John wins $500 in a slogan contest, tragedy strikes unexpectedly when the Sims' youngest child is killed in a traffic accident. Haunted by the memory of his child, John is unable to function properly at his job, and is soon fired. In despair, Sims contemplates suicide, only to be shaken back to reality by his son, who, oblivious to John's grief and disillusionment, declares proudly that he wants to be just like his daddy when he grows up. By chance, John gets a job as a street huckster for a local department store. Though both John and Mary know that this "triumph" is transitory, at least the family is together again, and at least they're reasonably happy. As the camera pulls back, back, back in a packed movie theatre, we leave John Sims just where we found him-one of The Crowd. At the behest of MGM, Vidor reluctantly filmed an idiotic alternate ending, wherein the Sims family, having inherited a fortune, are seen living in the lap of luxury. This finale was hooted off the screen wherever it was shown; thus, current prints of the film contain Vidor's original, ambivalent ending. A deceptively "small" film, The Crowd was assembled on as large a budget and with as much production polish as any "big" MGM picture. In 1934, Vidor produced a sequel with his own funds, Our Daily Bread. Alas, James Murray, the actor catapulted to the Big Time in The Crowd, was not a part of the project. A headstrong, irresponsible man, Murray had squandered the chance offered him by Vidor, and had descended into drunken dereliction. Unlike the hero in The Crowd, there was no one to pull James Murray back when, in 1936, he fell off a pier and drowned. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
One of the last great pictures of the silent era (The Jazz Singer had opened the previous year, and by 1929 the American silent cinema was dead), The Crowd has stood the test of time better than almost any other film of its era. King Vidor's story of the small victories and many defeats in the life of an all-too-ordinary man bears a ring of truth that sounds as clearly now as when it first hit the screen; James Murray and Eleanor Boardman achieve a low-key naturalism that nearly makes one forget that they're actors (that the troubled Murray never had another role of this caliber is nearly as tragic as anything that happens to his character). The film touchingly captures the drama of the many small events that make up a life, and Vidor's deceptively simple but highly intelligent visual style tells the characters' small story on a canvas just broad enough to show how small they really are without drowning them altogether. Unlike most films about an "ordinary guy," who usually rises to triumph or descends to tragedy, The Crowd avoids melodrama and Frank Capra-style hokeyness; the often sad circumstances of John and Mary are as common as can be (love, marriage, birth, death, disappointment, despair, reconciliation, and survival) and as compelling as life itself. Vidor's brave decision not to give the film a traditional happy ending (he grudgingly shot one that has thankfully been lost to the ages) may have prevented it from becoming a box-office hit, although, contrary to legend, it did earn a small profit. But while this film describes a life in which the brass ring will never be reached, it also makes clear that each life, no matter how ordinary, holds a story worth hearing, and Vidor's gift for telling that tale in all its humble detail is what makes The Crowd so special. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
