Universität Bayreuth
Hauptseminararbeit

CINEMATOGRAPHIC ELEMENTS AND THE MASS IN „THE CROWD“ AND „MANHATTAN TRANSFER“

von Nadine Wolf
2005

CONTENT

1. Preface ... 3

2. King Vidor’s “The Crowd” ... 4
2.1 Appearances and Depiction of the Mass ... 4
2.1.1 The Crowd Makes An Appearance ... 4
2.1.2 Character Analysis and Their Social Position ... 6
2.1.3 Vidor’s Crowd of New York ... 10
2.2 Cinematographic Aspects ... 11
2.2.1 Camera Moves ... 11
2.2.2 Perspectives ... 11
2.2.3 Street Scenes ... 12

3. John Dos Passos’ “Manhattan Transfer” ... 13
3.1 The ‘Manhattan Transfer’ of New York ... 13
3.2 Appearances and Depiction of the Mass ... 13
3.2.1 Situation of Appearances ... 13
3.2.2 Social Situations And A Character Analysis ... 14
3.2.3 The City of New York ... 17
3.3 Cinematographic Elements ... 18
3.3.1 Quick Cuts ... 18
3.3.2 Changing Focus ... 19
3.3.3 ‘Stage Directions’, Smells, Sounds And Colours ... 21
3.3.4 Symbols And Speed ... 22

4. Conclusion ... 24

5. Bibliography ... 25

PAINTINGS ... 26

6. Attachment ... 27
6.1 Eduard Manet: Le Bar Aux Folies-Bergère (1881-82) ... 27
6.2 Paul Cézanne: Still Life With Commode (1883-87) ... 27
6.3 Juan Gris: Guitar On A Table (1915) ... 28

1. Preface

The film The Crowd and the novel Manhattan Transfer are both products of the American 1920s, the Jazz Age. It was a time of great economic upswing, and money and success became very important. The society was in a state of flux as well, especially the women of the younger generation wanted to gain more independence. The Great War had not only changed the old conventions of young women, however. People moved into the big cities, harbouring great expectations and hope for a better life. New York was of course one of the cities to go to, not at last because it was considered the ‘capital’ of the Jazz spirit. This economic boom ended with the great Wall Street Crash in 1929.¹

King Vidor, producer of The Crowd, was born on February 8th 1894 in Galveston, Texas. His family was of Hungarian origin, which mirrors itself in his not necessarily ordinary name. The Crowd came into the cinemas in 1928 and is one of Vidor’s “Late Silents”, as Durgnat and Simmon call them (Durgnat/Simmon, 4). Vidor has earned himself the label ‘epic poet’, “given to large, almost abstract expressions of a man’s role in nature and society” (Durgnat/Simmon, 9). One of this ‘abstract expressions’ we can find in The Crowd in the role of John Sims, of whom I will take a closer look at later.

About tree years earlier, John Dos Passos published his novel Manhattan Transfer. He was born in Chicago on January the 14th in 1896. After he graduated from Harvard College, he decided to serve in the United States Medical Corps during the end of World War I. In his novels One Man’s Initiation and Three Soldiers he processes the experiences and impressions from those yeas. He continues with an acute awareness of his senses in Manhattan Transfer, a novel full of detailed descriptions, of smells, sounds, and impressions, making the story so real one could forget it is fiction.

In the following, I will first show some of the aspects of mass and cinematography that can be found in The Crowd, and will then continue on to those found in Manhattan Transfer. Finally, the differences and the points the two works have in common will be summed up.

2. King Vidor’s “The Crowd”

2.1 Appearances and Depiction of the Mass

2.1.1 The Crowd Makes An Appearance

The situations in which the mass appears in The Crowd are various and mostly in direct relation to John Sims’ life or even with him in the crowd. As Vidor put it, “you have a hard time finding any scenes in The Crowd that Murray’s not in” (Dowd/Shepard, 82). This one statement also underlines the fact that, although John Sims constantly tries and dreams of being one of the bosses or at least somewhat above the mass, he is and will always be only one ordinary man out of “the seven million that believe New York depends on them” (Vidor, 0:07:04).

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1 http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/1920′s_America.htm