The Crowd

An ordinary young man named John Sims arrives in New York City certain he will become somebody, only to vanish into the vast, indifferent crowd of office workers, street traffic, and skyscrapers that swallow ambition whole. King Vidor’s 1928 silent masterpiece follows John (James Murray, a virtual unknown Vidor plucked from the extras) and his wife Mary through courtship, marriage, children, everyday disappointments, and sudden tragedy, using real New York locations and startling camera movements (the famous shot that climbs a building and lands on one desk among hundreds) to capture the crushing anonymity of modern life. Made at the height of Vidor’s power after The Big Parade, this uncompromising, deeply human drama was so bleak MGM sat on it for a year; today it stands as one of the greatest films of the silent era — a landmark of American realism that still feels startlingly contemporary.