King Vidor's "The Crowd"

One of the masterpieces of silent cinema,"The Crowd" is Vidor’s unflinching study of the American Dream. The film centers upon John Sims, who from an early age imagines that he’s destined for great things. As a young man he journeys to New York to make his name, but over time he must come to terms with a relentlessly ordinary existence—the drudgeries of work, the quarrels of marriage. A powerfully humanist picture about the struggle for self-actualization, "The Crowd" would prove highly influential on later directors, in particular the Italian neorealists and, later, the French New Wave.