The Crowd (1928)

King Vidor was a master of melodrama. I really enjoyed this movie. Despite its silence, or perhaps due to its silence, it conveys so much raw emotion. The facial expressions and gestures are very exaggerated. The action is incredibly regular. The movie depicts normal life. It does not require a villain because life itself is tough enough. We overcome obstacles that are mundane, but we rarely see them on film. And it is not even so much that it was realistic, but that it was real. It is genuine. It is as if Vidor recorded an actual married couple without a script, and captured real life.

I also took notice of the music. It is two hours long, and the music is continuous in a silent movie. The music does not resolve when you think it will because it just has to keep going for two hours. It is actually pretty incredible. Professor Jelavich told us that when the movie was shown in theaters back in 1928, the music would have been played live and it would have been improvised. We did not even hear the same music. Every viewing would have hypothetically been different.

Warner Brothers has been sitting on this movie for many years. And we are waiting for Warner Bros. to re-release this movie in decent quality. All we had was a DVD version of the VHS release from back when people still used VHS. They have the print...they just have to share it.