The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-04-07
By ROBERT WOLF

GHAKESPEARE, let me point out
y for the benefit of Comrade Gold
and Comrade Lawson, was not en-
dowed by Mr.. Otto Kahn. He was a
hard-working hack writer, a poet
when he could get the time, who had
to earn his living as a theatrical
manager rewriting old plays. Eisen-
stein is nine to five (nine at night
to five in the morning, because the
studio is quieter them employee of
Sovkino, whose business management
is almost as soulless in it's insistence
upon commercial profit as that of any
American trust.
l do not want to prove too much
by these analogies--I too have taken
cndowlnents in the past, and would be
glad to get them again if | could.
Shakespcare's best play was Hamlet,
where he was nearest to pleasing
himself, and most remote, probably,
from pleasing his immediate audience,
| and Eisenstein did much better
job in "Potemkin" and "The General
! Line" undertaken at his own initi-
alive, than in October" which shows
something of the stiffness of work
undertaken at command.
But the point of these opening
paragraphs is that out of the hokum
of Hollywood. and not in spite of that
hokum, but because of IL, has come
the first really great American film
drama movie, it seems to me, quite
worthy to rank with "Potemkin,"
variety" 'The Last Laugh" BAL
let Mecanique," the best of Chaplin,
and the other few first-rate achieve
nents of the screen.
do not quite see how 'erhe Crowd"
escaped creating sensation among
both the intellectuals and the radicals
here. AS late movie critic for
"Sovietskoe Kino" of Moscow, |
predict that if ro-Goldwyn-Maye
ever sells it to the Soviet Union it
will make sensation there. Why
it failed to make sensation with the
public is an easier problem---its own
ers were afraid of it and soft-ped-
allied it, after a few weeks they COM
bined it on the program with a
patriotic film of Lindbergh, and al
though it was playing to crowded
houses it has been banisl.ed before it's
time from the Astor Theatre, and
withdrawn altogether from circula-
ton. 1t will not appear again till the
week of Arril 20, at Loew's State,
| AEfh apA pronIt.o1y 10 a,aI ~
when it comes. and unless it has been
changed or cut in the meantime you
will find yourself witnessing the first
revolutionary American film.
For "The Crowd" in quiet and
unassuming way is so revolutionary
that If the police knew their business
they would arrest King Vidor and
John V. A. Weaver. It's moral is:
Can anybody make a success in
America? Ye-e-e-es try and do
it! 1t is the first direct attack upon
the great capitalist myth. This in it.
self is so startling as TO be almost I'M
lelievable. Napoleon, in "The Man
Of Destiny" said that when he read
Rousseau he heard the tumbrils of
the revolution. To go to the Aston
Theatre and see an attack there upon
the foundation of capitalist morality,
is to hear the rattle of machine guns
on the streets.
Perhaps to be sure these are fascist
rather than Communist machine guns.
White-colar slaves do make Com
munist revolutions, and "The Crowd"
is the story of a disillusioned white
collar slave. Out of the vast mass of
commercial workers that is downtown
New York, Vidor and Weaver have
picked two, John and Mary, any two
of the clerks and stenographers that
you would hit at the noon hour from
Broadway office-building window
with a brick
They go through their ordinary
domestic joys and sorrows, nothing
that is not utterly trite, banal, and
sentimental--and did l hear the New
Playwrights talking about economic
determinism, and the influence of the
job a little while back ?-go see how
love and life and domesticity for