THE CROWD (1928)

King Vidor, a director who made a smooth transition from silents to sound pictures, is often associated with films with epic scope. Prominent among them the silent The Big Parade and the talkies Duel in the Sun and The Fountainhead. On the other hand, The Crowd is the intimate story of an ambitious but ordinary man who travels to New York City to become a success. Vidor uses his signature rapidly rising and dropping crane shots to situate Johnny, the protagonist, among the masses of people in the streets and in a huge office in which he is one of hundreds of insurance clerks looking for advancement. Vidor uses low and high-angle framing to denote hierarchy, and achieves maximum realism by filming in real locations (Manhattan, Coney Island, Niagara Falls).

What's most remarkable about The Crowd is that it's a story of failure. A deeply poignant one. Johnny may be ambitious but he is not talented enough to deserve a raise. He doesn't get it, and he grows despondent, and his marriage to Mary (Eleanor Boardman) suffers because of it. Boardman and James Murray give outstanding performances. Murray in particular is pitifully perfect. Pitifully because his real life proved to be a tragically intensified version of his best role. In 1936, at the age of 35, he was fished out of the Hudson River after spending the last few years of his life as a bum and an alcoholic.