ing Vidor indeed created a film that made full use of the capabilities of the silent film to tell its story and involve its audience.
The film comes at the end of a decade of increasing prosperity, and yet it was a prosperity that did not affect everyone. The hero of The Crowd is a common man who has not benefited from the post-World War I boom. Of course, that boom would prove to be illusory within a year with the Stock Market Crash of 1929, but most Americans saw no sign of that coming disaster in 1928. Most films of the time were escapist entertainment of the sort that has been the mainstay of the film industry almost from the beginning, and The Crowd is an exception not only for the industry but especially for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a studio known for its lush production
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