The Crowd (1928)

King Vidor's "The Crowd"

After the success of The Big Parade in 1925, King Vidor brought an unusual film to MGM production head Irvin Thalberg. Vidor pitched it as an experimental film, hoping to bring to life the kind of film he had always wanted to make. More specifically, we wanted a film that would set out to fit the parameters of his 'manifesto' that he published in the Variety Magazine's January 1920 issue. This 'manifesto' contained founding statements entitled "Creed and Pledge" that established moral antidotes for filmmaking. These creeds and pledges were: 1) I believe in the motion picture that carries the message of humanity; 2) I believe in the picture that will help humanity to free itself from the shackles of fear and suffering that have so long bound in its chains; 3) I will not knowingly produce a picture that contains anything I do not believe to be absolutely true to human nature, anything that could injure anyone or anything unclean in thought or action; 4) Nor will I deliberately portray anything to cause fright, suggest fear, glorify mischief, condone cruelty, or extenuate malice; 5) I will never picture evil or wrong, except to prove the fallacy of its line; 6) So long as I direct pictures, I will make those founded on principals of right, and I will endeavor to draw upon the inexhaustible source of good for my stories, my guidance and my inspiration. These tenants of filmmaking are the foundation that Vidor stood on throughout his career. However, it was the film The Crowd that really brought about his aspirations for a film to reflect the human experience. 

The film begins with the birth of John Sims, our protagonist. Born on the Fourth of July, 1900, John's father proclaims that his son will be someone significant one day. Vidor seems to link John firmly with America in many ways, like being born on the Fourth of July and mentioning that as a boy he sings in the choir, just like Lincoln and Washington. This American linkage seems to establish the notion that the common American starts off life with aspiration. Young John even tells his school friends that he is going to be someone special one day (according to his dad). Young John's hopes seem to represent the American Dream - a promise of prosperity. However, the film interrupts this first instance of hope with tragedy in the death of John's father. This is the first instance in the disillusionment of Johnny, shattering his expectations for life and providing him a bleaker, truer reality. These opening scenes present the entire structure of John's story.

After graduating, John decides to move to New York City in the hopes of living up to his father's expectations for him (and himself). On the boat headed towards the city, one passenger tells John, "You gotta be good in that town if you want to beat the crowd." This is the first mention of the conceptual 'crowd.' John, like anyone, does not want to be just another member of society. Rather, he (and us, the viewer) want to live a life above the mundane existence of the crowd. His individualist and American ideals establish John's hopes and aspirations. 

After the first heeded warning of 'the crowd,' Vidor shows us a shot of Johnny in his new office job. We see an overhead shot of lines of office desks - people toiling away at each one. The camera slowly pushed in and zooms until it reaches John at one of the desks. John has started off his adult life as another worker among dozens - lost in the crowd to begin with. 

At his job working at Atlas Insurance, his fellow employee Bert sets his up on a double date. On the date, John becomes so infatuated with his date Mary, that he proposes to her, which she accepts. The date itself is full of fun and amusement. John is enjoying life with his new partner Mary and everything looks promising. In the throws of his amusement, John spots of street clown and mocks him. He exclaims that the clown's father probably told him he was going to be president someday. It is apparent that John is full of self-importance - believing himself to be better than everyone around him. This is due to his youthful arrogance and the promises of prosperity by his father and the American way of life. 

After marrying Mary, John's life seems to be going well. However, it doesn't take long for things to start falling apart. First, John has a bad night meeting Mary's family. He doesn't seem to think much of her family, which causes him to act pompously around them. He even abandons the family dinner to go out drinking with his friends. This causes a rupture in his relationship with her family. However, Mary chooses to sweep this under the rug, commenting that they just don't understand him like she does. We are then shown a scene of John becoming bothered by things in the house not working properly, like the toilet, the door hinge, and other household items falling apart. Where once John was happy and full of bliss at the expectations for his life, now he is bothered by everything not working exactly the way he wants them to - even small things. 

These aspects of the film begin to paint the picture of lived human experience. The viewer recognizes themselves in John or Mary. As we watch, we recognize the stepping stones of life that the average person traverses. Much like John, the viewer begins their life full of hope and aspiration. We believe that we can overcome the mundane existence of the everyman and provide ourselves with something greater than. However, as we grow in our adulthood, we begin to realize that life isn't going to go smoothly for us. Relationship don't work out the way we want them to, our careers don't always develop into something grand, and even small things like household appliances not functioning properly really hit a nerve that resonates with the average viewer. Rather than the objective narrative of events, the film inverts itself into a collective subjectivity. 

Things begin to get more complicated when John and Mary get into an argument. It becomes apparent that John has become far more resentful towards Mary and has began to treat her poorly. After Mary exclaims that she is leaving, John seems unbothered - to Mary's displeasure. Mary, in order to save their marriage, proposes the two have a child together - to John's pleasure. Once again, John and Mary seem to think that life is about to become the utopia they envisioned. Their excitement for their new child has brought back the same expectations of fulfillment. However, this turns to disillusionment once again later down the road. We are shown a title card revealing that several years have past and now the couple have two children. During that time, John has only accomplished an $8 raise in his professional life. Mary is dissatisfied with John's lack of advancement and becomes resentful herself. Along with these big picture frustrations, small frustrations mount on top of them. During a scene at the beach, small things begin to fall apart as well - creating visual representation for the frustration experienced by life not aligning with expectations. Sand gets into their food and the frying pan falls over ruining their meal and spilling their drinks in the process. Dirt is figuratively thrown on their expectations as the two cannot seem to find fulfillment for themselves. 

Things start to look up once again when John wins $500 in a contest. Feeling a sense of hopefulness once again, John buys his family gifts. After calling over his children to come and see their gifts, their daughter runs out in front of traffic and is run over by a truck. It is as this point in his life that John begins to understand malevolence. It seems that the life he thought he was going to live turns into nothing but suffering. While his daughter is being looked at by a doctor in his home, he tries to shush the busy street below. However, it appears that no one will regard his pleas as everyone ignores him. John is now reconciling with the indifference of the world. After his daughter succumbs to her injuries and dies, John and Mary's life turns upside down. Due to extreme despair, John loses his job at the insurance company after an extreme outburst. Because of his arrogance, he does not want to take up a job that he feels are beneath him. He even rejects a job offer from Mary's brothers. Because of this, Mary feels that John is not being a good provider for the family and decides to leave. 

In order to win Mary back, John decides to take up a lower level job to get some income. He takes up a job as a street clown because of his ability to juggle balls. With the money from his street performances, John shows Mary that he is willing to do anything to win her back and keep their family. Mary sees that John is putting forth the effort and cautiously decides to take him back.

At the end of the film, John and Mary are sitting in an audience watching clowns perform a vaudeville act. As his friend Bert, sitting next to him, points out a clown in a newspaper, John joyfully exclaims, "That's me!" He then turns back to the clowns on stage and begins to laugh. Vidor then uses a crane to display an overhead of the audience, all laughing at the performance on stage - as the camera pans over them overhead. It is in this final moment that the film becomes a reflection of the audience in the theater watching the film - as the film screen turns into a mirror of the viewer reflecting themselves back at them. 

It becomes apparent that John is firmly a member of 'the crowd.' He was never able to live above the people around him. He was never able to achieve and accomplish the things he wanted to. His expectations for life turned into disillusionment. It is in this way that 'the crowd' becomes both John and the viewer. We are the same ambitious individual stuck in the crowd, all sharing the same lived experiences. The film reaches out and turns the individual into the collective through its shared life portrayal. John, the American everyman, was brought up by ambitions that turned him into a selfish youth, dreaming of prosperity, unaware of his own future shortcomings because of the promises of fulfilment. Through John's journey, the viewer sees themselves and their own aspirational ambitions to beat the crowd. Because of this, we are also able to reconcile John's shortcoming with our own, and see his faults in us. Where once we recognized our hopes in John, we now can see our own stubbornness and arrogance in him too. After John was able to see his own arrogances, taking the job as the street clown turned him into the very thing he mocked in the beginning of the film. John saw the 'other' in people and believe himself to be something different. The 'other' inverted itself and became John - as well as the viewer. We the viewer have become the subjects of our own mockery, unware that we were the arrogant ones all along. We realize that the crowd is us and we are not separate from it, just as John had to learn. Our objectivity of John inverted itself and became subjective - just as the clown did for John. 

Vidor's "The Crowd" shows us that we are all the clowns juggling to get by - just like we are all the crowd and not separate from it. The film is able to provide a commonality in subjectivity - allowing the viewer to see themselves through lived human experience. It forces us to reconcile with our shared perceptions. Through this, we become the crowd. We become the very thing we thought we were separate from. The Crowd as a film is meant to reflect the human experience of life and show us that we are not above the person we are sitting next to. The person next to you shares the same experiences of ambition, hope, loss, and arrogance as you do. The Crowd is able to subvert an objective narrative and create a shared subjective reality. In this way, the film was able to portray the tenants set about by Vidor at the start of his film career by creating a motion picture that carries the message of humanity, attempting to remove the shackles of fear and isolation from the individual and allow the viewer to recognize themselves in others. The Crowd becomes a film about you. In the 1960's, Jean-Luc Godard was asked why he doesn't make a film about ordinary people, to which he responded, "The Crowd has already been made. So why remake it?"