The camera swoops majestically through an enormous train station picking out individuals in the crush of humanity: soldiers, sailors, hookers, pickpockets, cops, Pullman porters, immigrants in peasant garb. This exhilarating opening is a tour de force of vignettes with characters delivering rapid fire dialogue perfectly timed to the swirling, unfettered movement of the G-d like camera.
A Snobby Society Dame steps up to a newsstand:
“Do you have Town & Country?”
Newsstand Owner replies in thick Yiddish accent:
“I had one, but they took it away from us 3,000 years ago.”
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