2021 Tarkovsky Prize 2nd Place: Jessica Schott-Rosenfield
King Vidor’s THE CROWD
by Jessica Schott-Rosenfield
The Crowd is a 1928 silent drama directed by King Vidor, and regarded as one of the most influential films of its time. The Crowd chronicles the life of a man named John Sims, who loses his father at a young age. Sims sets out for New York City to become the man his father wanted him to be, but quickly learns that it is harder to make something of oneself than he had imagined. The viewer follows John through marriage, the birth of his children, and the hardships of daily life in a monotonous office job. Vidor utilizes foreshadowing, camera movement, and character development to illustrate John’s descent into the depressing reality of being only one among many.
The Crowd spends little time creating a false sense of security before passing on to scenes which foreshadow approaching disaster. One of the first scenes depicting John as a grown man is of him and his future wife, Mary, on their first date, riding a city bus. They notice a man dressed as a clown on the sidewalk, juggling to draw attention to the advertising board he wears around his neck. Both John and Mary ridicule him, saying, “look at the poor sop. I bet his father told him he’d be president one day.” By this point the viewer has witnessed John’s father tell him the same thing, and is clued in to the subtext in this dialogue. This scene foreshadows the conclusion of the film, which sees John take the very same job he once laughed at. Another instance in which anxiety is induced is shot on a cliffside by Niagara Falls. John and Mary are on their honeymoon, and have laid out a blanket on the slope. From the viewpoint of the audience, the slope looks incredibly steep and unsafe. While the couple shares a loving moment, the audience is preoccupied by how dangerous their position is. This manifests unease, and a nagging feeling that this relationship will soon be put to the test. In these instances of foreshadowing, Vidor makes clear to the viewer that John is destined for ruin.
Camera movement in this film is particularly notable because of the shots which zoom out from a frame with one person to a scene of dozens. These shots serve to highlight how slim John’s chances of making it big are, especially in a city with millions of citizens all trying to achieve the same thing. When he first lands his job as an accountant, the repetitive and dull nature of the workplace is emphasized with shots of hundreds of men all sitting at identical desks. At first, the viewer is only seeing the protagonist, and focuses solely on him, but when the camera zooms out, the viewer loses Sims in a sea of people who all look the same. When the lunch bell rings, every worker rushes across the room as one, their movements dictated by a clock and a herd mentality.
John’s character progresses further into deep denial throughout the film, as he constantly asserts that when his “ship comes in,” he will have a better life. The defining moment of his development comes after his youngest child has been hit by a truck. The child lies in bed, surrounded by her family, and John signals that everyone should stay quiet to give her peace. Outside, fire engines clang and a crowd rushes toward the scene of an accident. John opens the window to tell the crowd to be quiet, and is in such a state of disarray that he does not even close the window against the noise before going outside to attempt to silence them with a mere finger to his lips. This mindlessly illogical act shows how far John has fallen into depression, and how unprepared he was for the possibility of failure. Furthermore, the image of him standing in the midst of hundreds of people, powerless, illuminates the grand theme of inadequacy and hopelessness.
The final scene of the film sees a lift in John’s spirits, as he has gotten a job and rekindled a good relationship with his wife and son. The family sits in a packed movie theater, laughing, and the same camera zooms which are used early on in the film return. This time, the shot begins not as John alone, but with his loved ones, and zooms out to show the crowded audience which surrounds them, all overcome with laughter too. The parallelism displayed with the repetition of this shot conveys a bittersweet feeling. John is now happier than he once was, has found a kind of peace, but is still lost in the same mass of people. Perhaps the love of a family will keep him content, yet the final loss of the protagonist among an unidentifiable throng still evokes an air of melancholy.
The Crowd is the story of millions of people who lived the same way John Sims did, always waiting for the American dream to lift them up as they saw it happen in the media. Through foreshadowing, camera movement and character development, Vidor conveys the fear and shame felt by so many in the early 20th century, when they realized that not everyone would be the next great success story.