1928 / 98m - USA
Drama, Romance
1.0*/5.0*
The Crowd poster

Watches

April 06, 2021

1.0*/5.0*

Classic melodrama that felt extremely rudimentary. The kind of film that prompts me to visit Wikipedia right after watching it, curious to find out whether it holds some kind of historic value. I find it hard to come up with a reason why else this film might have survived as one of the ultimate classics of the 20s.

John Simms is a regular Joe who grows up somewhat protected from the real world. His father hopes/believes John will end up a big deal. When he marries his sweetheart life seems rosy, but after they've moved to the big city (New York in this case) John finds out he's just one of many.

Performances are extremely basic, so is the drama. Everything is spelled out to the extreme, emotions are broad and unsubtle, the dramatic turn of events are predictable to a fault. It's a film that merely goes through the motions. It may have been one of the first to do so, but its motions were never very attractive to begin with. Poor.