The Crowd [1928] (Directed by: King Vidor)

• Q1: How does the film relate to the chapter in Foner?

The Crowd I believe related very little to Foner's chapter on the twenties. The film showed a man "waiting for his ship to come in" where the twenties were all about how people spent their leisure time and money. John Sims had always wanted to make something more of himself, and Eric Foner describes that the twenties were a "decade of prosperity" (Foner, 722). John and Mary Sims' lifestyle reflected a life that was spent worrying about monetary troubles, and in Chapter 20 Foner states that "During the 1920s, consumer goods of all kinds proliferated" (Foner, 722). The similarities I found in the movie to Foner's chapter was toward the end when John was able to take his wife and son to a vaudeville show, a leisure activity of that time, where they are then shown laughing and being very happy. Most of the film is spent in dreariness when the feeling I got from the chapter was that the twenties were a very happy time of frivilous spending on credit, which brought on the depression. This film, I believe, went in the opposite of how history went in that the film started out very sad but ended on a good note of happiness, which is also the opposite of how Chapter 20 in Give Me Liberty! went as well.

• Q2: What can we learn about American culture during the time period by interpreting the film as a primary historical source?

I don't believe much can be learned about American culture during this time period with using The Crowd as a primary historical source because the film portrayed this period as a period, I thought, similar to what happened in the American culture in the Great Depression. The way John and Mary squabbled over money issues just made me think of the lack of money in America during the Great Depression and not of a period of time called "The Roaring Twenties". There was almost nothing of leisure activity or spending in a majority of the film, and it was filled with heartache, especially after the Sims' daughter dies crossing the street to get her new toys her father had bought with the money he received, which is the only account of leisure spending found in most of the movie.

• Q3: What does the film reveal about attitudes toward gender, class, and race?

The film reveals little difference between what was expressed in the chapter regarding gender, class, or race. Mary Sim's was not a radical flapper girl, she was a very modest wife. Although, she does have some power over her husband, for example when she gives John a stern talking to about his "ship never coming in" and tells him that he needs to make more money for the sake of their new son. However, something was said about class that when Mary's brothers offered John a job out of pity, he refused, which showed, to me, a sense of pride in where he was in life.

• Q4: What is the most important scene in the film?

I think the most important scene in the film is the last scene of the film where John, Mary and their son are sitting in the vaudeville show with John's winning advertising slogan in the program for the show. This shows to me the most of what Foner describes in his chapter as being what the twenties personified,; leisure spending as the vaudeville show, consumerism as John's winning advertising slogan, and the laughter of the family as the general happiness of the 1920s society.

• Reviews

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• My Review

I give The Crowd a 1.5 out of 5 because I don't feel like this movie represented what Foner describes as the twenties. The only accuracey I saw was at the tail end of the film, and 104 minutes is a long time to go without seeing a similarity to the reading . I did, however, enjoy the intense human feeling that John and Mary emitted during their squabbles, it was more intense of a feeling than I expected from a silent film. The plot was very easy to follow, also unlike other silent films I have seen. All in all, it was a great silent film I just didn't think it pertained very well to Foner's Chapter 20 reading.