King Vidor | 98 mins | TV
Late silent-era drama — though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a comedy until halfway, when the light antics of a young couple in ’20s New York give way to some increasingly dark drama (interesting trivia: seven endings were shot for distributors to choose from, some happy and some sad; all chose sad ones. However, the copy we saw (taped from an ’80s TV showing) had a happy ending).
The first half is gentle but amusing; the sudden shift catches the viewer off-guard, undoubtedly making what follows more effective. The main character is in many ways pretty useless and at least some of the problems that befall him are his own fault, yet his comedic treatment in the first half makes you care for him throughout the second.
If you can accept the shifting styles of an age before genre was rigidly defined, The Crowd is a worthwhile experience.
German silent movie depicting a day in the ‘life’ of Berlin, part of the ‘city symphony’ genre that was popular around the 1920s. This makes it one of those films that is in some way Important, but sadly it’s still a bit, well, boring.
Silent movie (Universal’s first feature-length release) about white slavery in America. You don’t expect that from a 1913 film, eh?
Second instalment of the early French film serial, adapted from a long-running series of pulp novels.
2007 #18
Murnau’s first film in America, throughout the decades hailed as one of the greatest film ever made.
100Films.co.uk 