This masterpiece, one of the last of the great silent pictures, is one of the finest achievements of director King Vidor, the man who gave us The Big Parade (1925), Stella Dallas (1937), and The Fountainhead (1949), among so many varied movies.  The Crowd is a moving and powerful work, honest and timeless, and Vidor’s direction excels in both the smallest character details and the expansive expression of his themes.  Superbly photographed on location in Manhattan, The Crowd provides an astonishing record of the pre-crash NYC.  The film is about how, no matter how special or destined for greatness we think we are, most of us are merely part of the crowd, Everymen and Everywomen carrying big dreams through ordinary lives, sometimes weighed down by the pressures of the American Dream. 

James Murray stars as a 21-year-old who comes to the big city primed for success but with no specific aspirations.  He meets and marries Eleanor Boardman (Vidor’s real-life wife) and they, named John and Mary, become the Everycouple.  The film charts the usual rituals of work, marriage, and leisure.  John is a faceless bookkeeper at a big insurance company, lost in a sea of desks, aching for the upward mobility that isn’t forthcoming, waiting for his luck to kick in and so sure that it will.  

Nothing about John and Mary is unique, from their honeymoon in Niagara Falls to their financial worries and in-law troubles, even their having one son and one daughter.  Murray and Boardman, in their portrayal of what is essentially a love story, both give fresh and natural performances that are ultimately very touching and emotionally transparent.  (Boardman’s looks and her all-around radiance may remind you of Meryl Streep.)  The film’s portrait of a marriage is more realistic than most cinematic depictions of that institution.  The Crowd makes one major misstep, when the drama moves from the mundane to the melodramatic, which feels like a betrayal of the theme, moving the couple from being ordinary to being marked by tragedy.    

The ending, which may remind you of the finale of Sullivan’s Travels (1941), is a stunning visual as well as the perfect expression of all that the film has to say.  Further poignancy, as well as irony, is added by the knowledge of the real-life suicide of star Murray, eight years later, when his career was unable to sustain the high of The Crowd.  Though the overall content of this classic might classify it as a downer, nothing this artistically thrilling is likely to bring you down.