A Face in the Crowd
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Movie Reviews of A Face in the Crowd
Movie Review: It's the Sponsor, Stupid
Summary: 5 Stars
Occasionally, the world of cinema is blessed with a work that not only comments on an emerging issue of its time but also forecasts with target precision the potential ramifications of that issue on society at large for decades to come. "A Face in the Crowd" is such a groundbreaking film, the magnificence of its message brought alive by the two spellbinding, Oscar-worthy performances of Andy Griffith, making his film debut, and Patricia Neal, already a highly respected actress, who are given equal billing in the opening credits of this 1958 release.
Almost nonstop and for more than two hours, Andy Griffith chews up everything in his path as Lonesome Rhodes, a drifter with the gifts of gab and song and an uncanny ability to tell his audience what it wants to hear - whatever he thinks privately. With a maniacal laugh and take-no-prisoners approach aimed at whomever he is trying to win over, Rhodes is the antithesis of the straight-arrow good ole' boy that Griffith would portray with astounding success on the tube just several years later. First-time viewers of this film will know immediately they're Not In Mayberry Anymore when, instead of popping a Ritz cracker into his mouth and breaking into a smarmy grin, Rhodes takes a belt from a whiskey bottle and sneers as he manhandles his guitar in the jailhouse - or when he leers malevolently at a baton twirler's calves during a mass adulation in the town in which he was "discovered". In less capable dramatic hands, Griffith's reading of the Rhodes character could easily have become repetitive and headache inducing, but in Griffith's roundhouse performance, the viewer is left spellbound, almost hypnotized by one of the most overlooked performances in American cinema.
The casting of Patricia Neal as the radio producer who innocently christens Rhodes "Lonesome" and sets America on a course of idol worship was truly inspired. Her soft-spoken drawl, doe-eyed look of innocence and fear of getting too close to Rhodes' crackling bonfire of sexual energy serve as the perfect counterpoint to Griffith's rip-snortin' persona. Neal is the only performer in "Crowd" that holds her own against Griffith's mesmerizing presence.
In terms of its message, "Crowd", adroitly written by Budd Schulberg (who the credits say also co-wrote the songs Griffith performs), tells us that anyone with talent or the right stage presence can be packaged at convenience for mass consumption - so long as the packagers have the final say. It's all about the Sponsor, Stupid, even at the local radio station whose manager plays hard-to-get with an advertiser smitten by Rhodes' unctuous charm, and the stakes only grow larger when Rhodes moves to Memphis, then New York. "Crowd" debuted when Madison Avenue was starting to perfect the psychological advertising techniques first exposed in Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders" (published during the year this film was shot), and "Crowd" both deprecates and warns against these techniques. Make no mistake, "Crowd" says, the media is all about money, and few who toil in its hallways will have the backbone to take a stand against self-interest in taming the media in order to have its celebrities use their powers responsibly. For Rhodes, the black woman he ushers on-camera or the boy in the wheelchair are simply props that help perpetuate both his ratings and his sinister influence, and when he decides to escalate to the next level with a demogogic senator, the best his writer can do is sit down and try to dash off an expose. Even Neal's character briefly succumbs to the promise of a payoff when bad-boy Rhodes realizes she's mad as hell and won't take it any more. And when the "next" Lonesome Rhodes is discovered, there are all too many industry players ready to take up his cause... and cash in.
In the end, "Crowd" can be viewed as warning that we may never see the last of the Joseph McCarthys, but that only until things become too "hot" under the kleig light will media titans pull the plug. It's the Sponsor, Stupid, as attested to in real life by Edward R. Murrow, the Smothers Brothers and Don Imus.
Hell Hath No Fury Like an Advertiser Scorned. Until then, all bets are off, and damn the ideology... of whatever stripe.
Movie Review: A prescient masterpiece.
Summary: 5 Stars
I wasn't terribly familiar with the work of director Elia Kazan until he was stood up during an Academy Awards presentation a few years ago. It seemed he'd rather gutlessly turned in some members of the Communist Party during the McCarthy era and Hollywood still resented him for it.
After these years have gone by, I heard a newsman whose work I like refer to "Lonesome Rhodes" Beck, for Glenn Beck, the popular commentator. I wasn't sure who Lonesome Rhodes was until I read Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance. In that fine book I learned of the film and was fortunate to have gotten it from Amazon.com.
I've always been impressed with Andy Griffith. My parents had a comedy album by him back in the 1950s. And who can forget the Andy Griffith show, as American an institution as Leave it to Beaver and other light classics. Later I saw him in a movie or two in which I thought he was quite good. Well, this film was done before he even did that old television series! Until this film, he'd only done stage acting, in "No Time for Seargents" on Broadway.
I'll do my best to not give anything away while describing it. Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal, whom you may remember from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, a local radio show host in I think Arkansas, has a Man on the Street type show called "A Face in the Crowd." She decides to broadcast from the local jail where there's a smartalek drifter Larry Rhodes getting over a bender from the night before. She refers to him as "Lonesome Rhodes" and the story begins. Rhodes has a charm to beat the band. While he wants to drift, the radio show wants him on full time. He continues to charm.
Rhodes truly does move up the ranks. He gets offers in bigger cities. The script was ahead of itself in that Rhodes had an appeal to a black audience which a producer, portrayed masterfully by Walter Matthaw, is impressed with especially in the south! He's even able to convert people he's alienated because of his straightforward, down home style.
In the meantime, Marcia is in love with him. Rhodes manipulates her, and she awaits him after he's proposed. But Lonesome has put on the charm to a cheerleader in a national contest and he marries her.
Then a conservative figure wants Lonesome to help him in his Senate campaign. By then, Rhodes is a megastar and has become quite the megalomaniac!
But the whole facade comes tumbling down for reasons I don't want to give away.
The acting was outstanding. The only other familiar face among actors was that of Anthony Franciosa for whom I think it was also his first screen performance. Again, Griffith was stellar, as was Patricia Neal.
The interview that's part of the DVD is worth nearly as much as the film. Andy Griffith is now a lot older and he states how Kazan told him to act toward, for example, the cheerleader he ends up marrying (for a while anyway). There is also discussion of what led Kazan to turn in his colleagues during the HUAC nightmare. I almost begin to sympathize with Kazan (though still appreciate his colleagues who had more guts and didn't turn in their friends). But a film such as this does exonerate Kazan to a degree; he did see the insidious influence of the ignorant power freaks that someone like Lonesome Rhodes can become.
Yes, I said "prescient" in my title for reasons apparent earlier in this review. There are, unfortunately, media figures--ironically many of them who ARE the media they allegedly despise--who resemble Lonesome Rhodes. They have an inordinate degree of influence on those who adore them because they're celebrities.
It can and does happen again and again and again. So a "parable" such as this fine film is something we need to remind ourselves of our own gullibility. Get it and show it to people as you discuss WHO they should pay attention to and why. It'll be a learning experience to get us out of the intellectual doldrums in which we find ourselves early in the 21st century!
Movie Review: Skewering Indictment of Television Comes Blazing Thanks to Peak Work from Kazan, Schulberg, Neal and Griffith
Summary: 5 Stars
There are two major things that I find quite fascinating as I watch this 1957 classic. The first is the prophetic, hyper-realistic portrayal of television as a pervasive medium encroaching upon people's lives in ways unheard of back in the 1950's. The second is Andy Griffith's pull-all-the-stops performance as drunken hobo-turned-media sensation "Lonesome" Rhodes. For those who know Griffith only for his homespun TV portrayals, you will be surprised how remarkably he shows the venal underbelly and high-octane charisma of a character miles away from kindly, soft-spoken Sheriff Andy Taylor.
Master filmmaker Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg, collaborating for the second and last time after their brilliant "On the Waterfront" three years earlier, tell the story of Rhodes, a burgeoning pop-culture phenomenon thanks primarily to the efforts of Marcia Jeffries, a young radio program host who discovers him sprawled in a hangover on the floor of a rural Arkansas jail. He mesmerizes the local radio audience with an improvised country song about his predicament, "Free Man in the Morning", and this marks the beginning of his meteoric rise all the way to his own weekly national TV program. As he capitalizes on his folksy charm and empathetic manner, he becomes a power-crazed tyrant behind the scenes. A corporate tycoon wants to use Rhodes' influence to sway a Presidential campaign in his favor, and Rhodes' megalomania moves him lockstep into a Citizen Kane-like form of paranoia.
It all seems exaggerated but it's brilliantly observed much like a film that covered the same themes twenty years later, Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky's "Network". However, even with strong doses of black comedy sprinkled throughout, Kazan and Schulberg use more melodramatic elements in their skewering until the near-Shakespearian climax when Rhodes' comeuppance takes on a grandly theatrical fervor. In a way, it seems a shame that Griffith never got another chance to bring out his dark side on the big screen. While sometimes wildly undisciplined in his film debut, he dexterously shows the cunning and charisma of his character to a level that makes his national celebrity utterly credible.
Showing his amazing facility to elicit stellar work from a wide variety of actors, Kazan assembled a strong cast to back him up starting with Patricia Neal, who is just as devastating as Marcia, a woman torn between ambition, decency and her fateful attraction to Rhodes. An impossibly young Walter Matthau shows the beginnings of his cynical screen persona as Mel, a crafty television writer who de facto becomes Marcia's conscience. In their film debuts and making indelible impressions, Anthony Franciosa and Lee Remick play Joey, an office lackey who turns into Rhodes' immoral agent, and Betty Lou, a teenaged baton twirler seduced easily by Rhodes' power, respectively.
If the film has one flaw, it's that it runs on a bit long for the parable it tells especially since Rhodes' moral ambiguity is pretty much settled in the first half of the story. Nevertheless, this movie is essential viewing as it not only shows a powerful early indictment of television (and supports Marshall McLuhan's mantra, "The medium is the message") but provides another example of the underappreciated artistry of Kazan and Schulberg. The 2005 DVD has unfortunately no commentary track but one strong extra, a half-hour 2005 featurette, "Facing the Past", which spotlights Kazan's polarizing testimony in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the threatening role of television in the 1950's, both major factors in making the film. Griffith, Neal and Schulberg are interviewed. There is also a widescreen version of the original film trailer.
Movie Review: Elia Kazan's Neglected Masterpiece - Finally On DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
Ask most film fanatics to name their favorite Elia Kazan film and you will likely get "On the Waterfront" as your answer. But if you were to ask me, my answer is "A Face in the Crowd." Were it not for the fact that Kazan was "blacklisted" by the Hollywood liberal elite for his supposed testimony (in which he named only those who were already named by others), this film might have swept the Academy Awards. As it was the film was virtually ignored -- Andy Griffith, who gave the performance of a lifetime, was not even nominated for Best Actor, and his performance h0olds up to this day.
As to this classic making its debut on DVD, all I can say is It's About Time.
The film also marked the debuts of three talented actors that left their marks on film and television: Tony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, and Lee Remick.
But what makes this movie so great to watch again and again is that its subject matter never goes out of date, based as it is on the power of television to manipulate and control the minds of viewers. Griffith stars as Larry Rhodes, a drifter awoken one morning in the local jail by Patricia Neal, who is looking for subjects for her morning radio show, "A Face in the Crowd." Assured by the sheriff that he'll be released if he performs, Rhodes grabs his guitar and puts on a show that lands him a regular job on Neal's radio show. Now known as "Lonesome" Rhodes, his combination of homespun philosopher-entertainer quickly takes him from Arkansas to Memphis, where he meets Joey DePalma (Tony Franciosa), an aspiring agent who lands him a network deal in New York. Walter Matthau goes along as the head writer who stays on for the pay despite being mocked by Rhodes. Neal also comes with her protégé, for not only is she his manager, she is also his lover. (The movie's sub-text deals with the love Neal has for the Frankenstein monster she created, despite what he does to her time after time.) Her reaction when she finds out at the airport that her intended Lonesome has married a cheerleader (Remick) is one of the finest pieces of acting in the history of film.
Brought to New York to pitch a worthless product call Vitajex on a variety show, Rhodes makes both the product and himself the biggest things since sliced bread. There is a hilarious sequence of a bout three minutes during this scene of how Madison Avenue can manipulate the public into believing a worthless product is actually good for you. People I've shown this to sit there with mouths agape, dazzled by sophistication rarely encountered in the movies.
Rhodes now comes to the attention of the product's sponsor, who convinces him that not only is Rhodes an opinion maker, but that his untapped power should be used to make a Senate nonentity named J. Worthington Fuller into a viable presidential candidate. Rhodes takes the challenge, renaming the Senator "Curly" Fuller and featuring him on his new show, "Lonesome Rhodes' Cracker Barrel," a sort of down home "McLaughlin Group." By this time, Rhodes's megalomania is completely out of control; his price for Fuller is a cabinet post as Secretary for National Morale. And he almost gets away with it, until Neal pulls the plug in a most unique manner.
It is left to Walter Matthau to deliver the epilogue: we have not seen the last of Lonesome Rhodes. He'll be back, with others just like him; a chilling prediction only too well borne out by subsequent events.
It's a shame this classic hasn't received more attention than it has. The message is timeless, the acting and direction flawless. There has been talk of a remake, but let's hope this doesn't come to fruition. It's perfect as is.
Movie Review: Unbelievably prescient!
Summary: 5 Stars
This astounding film is so prescient regarding our current plight that it could be considered prophetic. Andy Griffith is astonishing in his role as a lifelong failure and screw-up who is discovered and groomed into a folksy demagogue by a Svengali-like character (portrayed in the movie by Patricia Neal and in life by Karl Rove). Fronting for a sinister group of conservative and wealthy big-business-types, Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes manages to get one of them elected President by talking him up between stints of joking, banjo-playing and being "jes' folks" on the radio (here fiction and the present reality diverge somewhat). Familiar to me from his work on "The Andy Griffith Show", I have not seen such remarkably successful casting against type since the avuncular Fred Mac Murray of the 60's TV show "My Three Sons" played the weaselly, self-serving Navy officer in "The Caine Mutiny".
You might say that this movie has a happy ending: Just when "Lonesome" Rhodes is at the zenith of his power and popularity, Patricia Neal decides to leave the microphone open after one of his broadcasts ends so that the public will learn what he really thinks of them. Instead of folksy patter, the country is stupefied as they overhear venomous contempt for them stream from their radio speakers. With that, Rhodes is finished.
The concluding half-hour which follows is a harrowing scene as Rhodes returns to his luxurious home and proceeds to emotionally disintegrate before the eyes of a skeptical and unsympathetic Walter Matthau. (Did the people who made "Network" get their ideas for the Peter Finch character's breakdown from this scene?) From the standpoint of the story as a whole, the movie could have ended soon after the scene with the open mike, but the sight of ol' "Lonesome" raving, bawling, and wallowing in self-pity is one the viewer is not likely to forget.
The most disturbing thing about this film is the evident faith of Elia Kazan-a patriot who endured much vilification for testifying against Stalinist Communists in the movie industry-that the people, though mislead, would eventually catch on and would do the right thing. That is by no means clear at the moment. Instead, there is plenty of evidence that the public has turned away from serious news (it may tell them things they do not want to hear) and towards infotainment that plays to their fears, hates, vanities, delusions and ignorance. By contrast, they have shown themselves appallingly credulous towards official assurances and prevarications of a sort usually seen only in Nazi or Soviet propaganda. Indeed totalitarian propaganda, and even "Lonesome" Rhodes' pseudo-populist cornpone seem hopelessly primitive compared to today's state of the art. Even so, the worst lies are always the ones told to one's self. When the country reacts to officially condoned torture and murder of prisoners with something like `They would never do that! And besides, what's wrong with it anyway?', then reality has finally trumped any possible satire-even satire as brilliant as this film's.