The city montage from King Vidor’s 1928 silent film, The Crowd
The montage of the busy city streets, enormous crowds, and speeding trains that is Johnny’s introduction to New York City is frantic and a bit awe-inspiring, especially the great shot that climbs the side of the building where Johnny works. Many of the crowd shots were done with a hidden camera, and in one scene, when a traffic cop seems to tell us to move along, he was actually instructing Vidor and his crew to move.” (source)
(Max Weber, Rush Hour, 1915)
But what does anyone get from The Crowd? The comfortable citizen who drove to the theatre in a car of his own and who can sleep at night without worrying about the grocery bill, sees paraded before him on the screen every heartache he and his wife endured during the years of their upward struggle. Out of locked closets come spectres of the past that the screen breathes life into and makes real again. And what do the friends of Johnny Sims get out of it- the young people who constitute the crowd? The only thing that keeps their heads up and eyes front is the thought that some day they will rise above the multitude, as the heroes in motion pictures always do. But this picture has no such inspiration. With extraordinary vigor and conviction it plants the utter futility of endeavoring to battle one’s way to success. It shows that the crowd is too powerful to be combatted, and it breathes hopelessness and despair.” (source)
- Anne