You've gotta be good in that town if you want to beat the crowd. In his sobering search for fame and fortune, John is immediately submerged in the new capitalistic, uncaring environment - with its massive confusion and overpowering size. From a high angle, crowds of scurrying pedestrians cross the city block at W 45th. Cars and bus traffic overwhelm the thoroughfare. An endless movement of people, cars, vehicles, and elevated trains speed by.
Smokestacks spew plumes of white smoke from skyscraper tops and from tugboats in the harbor.
The camera moves further and further back to encompass the exhilarating scope and vastness of the city, filled with beehives of workers. Then, aimed at the top of a tall office building, it rotates in a dizzying clockwise turn. One of the greatest impressionistic tracking shots in all of cinematic history begins at the street level. Suddenly, the office building rises and straightens up outside one floor, and transports the viewer directly into one of its windows. In a dissolve, the camera slides through the window into a large room filled with a monotonous criss-crossing of hundreds of rows of identical office desks and workers.