Restored with a very nice score,"the crowd" hasn't aged a bit.The topic is as relevant today as it was in 1928.Do have a look at the first pictures of "the apartment" (1960) or the last ones of "working girl"(1988)and you'll know what I mean. John Sims tries to beat the crowd,this crowd that follows him everywhere,at work,in the streets,at the fair or on the beach.He doesn't even realize his condition :you should see him laughing at the people on the street,behaving like sheep.It's always someone else,his wife says,take a look at yourself.
The secondary characters are wonderfully depicted:the well-padded buddy,the mother and brothers-in-law always contemptuous,always putting John down.Lots of sequences are memorable,now comic,now tragic:the tiny flat where even the bed must be folded,the huge office where employees are doing the same job at the same time,where everybody acts alike when they leave their job,like some kind of ballet.
John Sims is the embodiment of the American dream,but it has an universal appeal.When he was born,his father promised he would have good prospects,he would become someone big.King Vidor does not show the relationship father/son cause the father disappears when John is still a boy,but we can easily imagine it.So Sims thought NY was depending on him,and he discovers that he will be a wash-out all his life.If it weren't for his little boy who still believes in him(Vittorio de Sica will remember it for his "bicycle thief",he would throw himself under a train.
The cinematography is prodigious;two examples : The father is dead, the boy is climbing a stair : stunning high angle shot,enhancing his awful pain. On the contrary,the skyscrapers are filmed from below,showing how lost a human being can feel in this steel and glass world .
A detail :the hysterical/historical joke at the fair will be used again by the Beatles themselves in their "magical mystery tour" home-made movie.
1928:the silent era was coming to an end but we had not heard the last of it.
