The Crowd ***** (1928, Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach) – Classic Movie Review 2586

Producer/co-writer/director King Vidor’s 1928 silent classic stars James Murray, who gives an exceptional performance as John Sims, an ordinary, everyman clerk with a small job in the big city. Eleanor Boardman is stupendous, too, as Mary his wife in this story of the couple’s life together in a huge, impersonal metropolis, exploring all their hopes, struggles and failures.

One of the most famous of all silent films, it still packs a huge emotional punch and it retains its reputation as one of the cinema’s most enduring classics. King Vidor was nominated for Best Director, Dramatic Picture in the first Oscar ceremony in 1929 and the film was nominated for Best Picture – Unique and Artistic Production. They might have won if the MGM boss had supported his own movie.

Vidor’s painstakingly realistic slice of life is beautifully filmed, with its street scenes shot with hidden cameras by cinematographer Henry Sharp on New York City locations, using real crowds instead of extras, real buses and trains, and even real traffic cops. In one scene, a cop is looking to the camera and telling someone to move along. It was Vidor and his disguised film crew – and Vidor incorporated it into the scene.

Nine different endings were filmed and two were released, so distributors had a choice of happy or unhappy endings for their audiences, as MGM preferred to release films with happy endings.

Murray was a studio extra who just happened to walk past on the lot when Vidor was looking for an unknown leading actor. Alcoholism soon took its toll on Murray who was reduced to begging in the street. One of the passers-by he solicited for money turned out to be Vidor who offered him a part in the film’s semi-sequel, Our Daily Bread (1934) but Murray declined, thinking it was only made out of pity. In 1936 Murray’s body was fished out of the Hudson River, only 35.

Boardman was Vidor’s wife, and took time off to have a baby during the extended, lengthy period of production.

Also in the cast are Bert Roach, Daniel G Tomlinson, Dell Henderson, Lucy Beaumont and Estelle Clark.

John V A Weaver, Harry Behn and Joe Farnham are co-writers.

MGM head Louis B Mayer despised the film because of its depressing theme and because he thought it was obscene due to the scene featuring a toilet. It may be be the first film to do so. It was Mayer who insisted that the happy ending was shot. [Spoiler alert]  This shows the couple by a Christmas tree. John has become a success at writing ad slogans. Mary’s new dialogue title reads: ‘Honest, Johnny, ‘way down deep in my heart, I never lost faith in you for a minute.

In the very first Academy Award submissions, Mayer spoke out against his own film, urging his fellow board members not to vote for it. So they gave the first (and only) Academy Award for Best Picture – Unique and Artistic Production to F W Murnau’s Sunrise (1927).

In 1989, it was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2586

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