Crowd Scenes

Steyn On-line ^ | March 28, 2020 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

After years of guest-hosting for Rush and Tucker, this weekend I'm guest-hosting for Kathy Shaidle. Our Saturday movie columnist is taking a night off and yours truly has been pressed into service. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm up for it. Yesterday Governor Chris Sununu (whom I saw down in Bedford for "Fox & Friends" only a few weeks ago) ordered the whole of New Hampshire to shelter in place - and after thirty-six hours or so I'm already stir-crazy. Social distancing, self-isolation, quarantine, house arrest, it's quarter to three, there's no one in the place but ...me.

So I find myself pining for crowd scenes. Thus herewith a Saturday-night movie medley with an ever shrinking cast - for, as the budget-conscious Lew Grade once asked re Jesus of Nazareth, "Do we have to have twelve disciples?"

Crowd-wise, this seems as good a place to start - King Vidor's eponymous masterpiece of 1928, He'd finished The Crowd in 1927, but Louis B Mayer disliked it and so didn't release it for a year - by which time a certain mammy singer had blown up an entire cinematic aesthetic. If he'd put a mammy in the crowd, it might have done better box office. But the opening - with its famous shot up the side of the skyscraper to the army of paper-shuffling clerks within - retains all its power:

[BraveMan]

The only movie I can think of that would honor the current social criteria is Eraserhead . . .

[decal]

Or the last scene in The Day of the Locust.

[minnesota_bound]

“You only live twice” movie with James Bond in a Japanese bath and looking up at the women with her legs... well it would not be in today’s movies : )
At 1:55 mark.