Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

A young man comes to New York with big dreams and a bit of good and bad luck - then life happens. If there was a genealogical tree for movies than The Crowd would be very close to the root. There is not a minute where I didn't have the feeling that I've seen a similar scene in a newer film. The story beautifully combines a bit of romantic, comedic and tragic elements and at the end it has the effervescent melancholy similar to Chaplin's masterpieces. All is lost but hope. There are two scenes that caught my eyes in terms of visual work. They might not be the best scenes in the film, but for inexplicable reasons I felt drawn into the frame. The first one is, obviously, the depiction of crowds. A myriad of films have tried to depict crowds, and Vidor has managed to catch an air of the Koyaanisqatsi films by simply superimposing top shots of busy street crossings in New York. The technique is super simple, effective and... I like superimpositions. They are highly und...

The half-blood gypsy orphan is taken in by a family and is wooed by two brothers, one of them a criminal, the other a law-abiding moral man. The strong moralistic overtone and the rather bizarre depiction of an ethnic majority caught my attention foremost when watching this film. The beautiful Technicolor looks incredibly bizarre with those browned faces and ultra-white teeth. The story in itself meandered a bit and only the showdown was of some minor interest. If the brother hadn't married the story might have been much more interesting. This way, the woman doesn't have to make the choice herself, everything is plainly laid out for her. The half-baked offer to go with Cotten's character into the city is laughable the moment it is said. But the movie is drenched in morality that much more would have had to be changed for this film to work. On a side note, Peck seems to have chosen his roles (though not always the scripts) with quite some care, not to come of as a ra...