Some Musings and a Bit of a Rant on The Crowd (1928)

Why is it so hard to watch this film properly? Or even improperly.

The general public tends to think of silent films as worthless, inferior counterparts to sound. If they are remembered, they are remembered as overly fast, unfunny comedies, filled with boring gags, and with picture fidelity that is nigh unwatchable.

This of course wasn’t the case, and the silent era of film was home to many films of all genres. The silent era knew sweeping wartime epics on a scale still impressive today, romances that maintain their power, science fiction and horror films. Even Chaplin who is remembered is remembered incorrectly. Actually watching one of his films reveals that the comedy is less slapstick than generally believed, and that his films are filled with a bittersweet pathos. Most of his features will reduce me to tears at some point in their runtime.

Some silent films are even in color.

If presented properly in HD, most people I show are shocked by how good these films can be. How this era of films has the power to reach across the century and move its audience even today. Watching a silent film communally is a special experience, It’s like getting to share a dream with others.  Something about the silver images flickering in the darkness has an entrancing power that films have forgotten somewhere in the past.

History has not been kind to silent films. Almost all silents are lost, and many are no accident. Many films were burned intentionally.

Unfortunately even the films lucky enough to survive the purges are frequently shown improperly, much to the detriment of the viewer, and the reputation of a large part of film heritage.

These films can be moving, beautiful, stunning works of art. Precious time capsules that allow us to peek into the past in a very real and important way, but only if they are presented, and only if they are presented correctly.

Hollywood has broken their habit of destroying their artworks en masse (thank god), but a film isn’t truly preserved if it exists languishing away in a vault. It isn’t good enough that films like The Crowd, or other equally significant works  like The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or Robin Hood  exist in high quality 35mm prints. There needs to be a good way to view them. Please.

Tonight I tried to watch The Crowd. Its an academy award winning film from 1928, and is a very notable film. It features beautiful swooping shots in the city, and has a poignant social message about class division. It is a film that was a classic in the 20s, and should remain a powerful experience even today. 

Unfortunately despite this film existing in (purportedly) beautiful, high quality prints, The best edition available to the public appears to be a VHS release. I eventually secured a copy of a copy of this release, but it was a struggle to watch. Despite my best efforts, the film fell flat, not through faults of its own, but through faults in its presentation. 

This Is the most famous shot of the film, here presented in such a way that It is impossible to tell where the lead character is seated, nor see any faces.

I know blu ray releases of such films are a difficult proposition to justify financially (though many boutique labels do release silent films under license, so they must make something), but this is about more than money. Make these films viewable, available to stream, anything. It’s your history, don’t let it languish in a vault.

Theatrically, this text would have been several feet tall, but here it is difficult to make out at all.

If a film is not available for viewing in a way that can demonstrate the power of the film, The film is effectively lost.   

Viewing a film in such low fidelity is nearly impossible. Some degradation of the picture is easy to look past, you stop noticing it quickly. But a picture as poor as this one is not truly viewable. I have to carefully analyze each shot to even know what is going on, and this meta-cognition makes it impossible to be truly swept away by the picture.

In medium shots, with some difficulty, It is possible to tell what characters are represented.

The fact that this is the only way to view an academy award winning film is nothing short of disgraceful. If this film is not commercially viable for a release, but is preserved in high quality form (as it is), then I believe films like this should be made freely available through the internet. At least license a film like this one to a boutique distributor. The Criterion Collection or Kino Video would be delighted to release this film.

If this problem was unique to this film, It would be annoying, but not truly upsetting. But the fact is that much of our surviving film heritage is stuck in this postition. Tonight it was The Crowd (1928). A few nights ago I had the same problem with the war epic The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Robin Hood (1922) has Douglas Fairbanks, but is very hard to find (that one at least had a dvd release on the 2000s, long out of print). The Wind (1928) hasn’t been commercially released as far as I can tell. 1926’s The Scarlet Letter stars Lilian Gish, but is worryingly difficult to find.

None of those are obscure films, they are regarded as being masterpieces. If we move to silent films that are not so well known, the situation becomes much more dire. Please, at least with the extremely well known films, put them on a streaming service or something.