charlesem I don't know if TCM intentionally "counterprogrammed" the Trump inauguration by scheduling Elia Kazan's film about a faux-populist demagogue on the same day as the ceremony, but it sure looks like it, and I approve. Like Trump, A Face in the Crowd's Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes (Andy Griffith) is a product of the media's amoral pursuit of the colorful character, a man lifted to uncommon power by those entertained by the flamboyance and vulgarity. Rhodes (perhaps like Trump) isn't so much the villain of Budd Schulberg's story and screenplay as are his enablers, Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) and Mel Miller (Walter Matthau), and his exploiters, like Joey DePalma (Anthony Franciosa), who enrich themselves while discovering the previously untapped potential of mass media. In 1957, this potential was just beginning to be realized, but 60 years later it had taken a dangerous man to the White House. I don't think Kazan and Schulberg fully realized that possibility, just as Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky didn't fully realize the prescience of Network (Lumet, 1976). Both films should serve as a permanent warning that today's satire is tomorrow's nightmare. A Face in the Crowd is an important film without being a great one. Schulberg's screenplay falls apart in the middle, and the denouement in which Marcia somehow comes to her senses and exposes Rhodes as a fraud is awkward and mechanical, largely because Marcia herself is something of a mechanical character. An actress of considerable skill, Neal does what she can to make the character live, but the words aren't there in the script to explain why she tolerates Rhodes's fraudulence as long as she does. Matthau and Franciosa come off a little better because their roles are written as stereotypes: Cynical Writer and Go-getting Hot Shot. So the film really belongs to Griffith, who parlays his dead-eyed shark's grin into something that should have been the foundation of a career with more highlights than a folksy sitcom and an old-fart detective show. It's a charismatic but ragged performance that needed a little more shaping from writer and director, something that Kazan admitted to himself in his diaries when he wrote about Rhodes and the film, "The complexity ... was left out." Rather than having Rhodes revealed as a fraud to his followers, Kazan said, Rhodes should have been allowed to recognize that he had been trapped his own fraudulence. Deprived of anagnorisis, a moment of tragic self-recognition, Rhodes becomes a figure of melodrama, bellowing "Marcia!" from the balcony at the end but probably fated to make what Miller suggests to him, the comeback of a has-been. Fortunately, Kazan and Schulberg were wise enough to change their original ending, in which Rhodes commits suicide -- there's not enough tragedy in their conception of the character for that. (charlesmatthews.blogspot.com)

Brett Chandler (Thunderbuck) Great. Really great. Deserves wider recognition, because as a study of power and populism it's up there with "Citizen Kane".No, Elia Kazan didn't have Orson Welles' dazzling technical brilliance (though there's a wonderful natural feel of being onstage with the performers throughout), but he was very much an actor's director and brings some spectacular performances to the screen here.I'm a child of the early '60s, so I grew up with The Andy Griffith Show, Mayberry RFD, and Matlock. I'd experienced many, many stories on TV with Andy Griffith, and he was a comfortable, familiar presence. Maybe the best compliment I can pay this film and his performance in it was that I quickly forgot he was Andy Griffith at all.Griffith's character of "Lonesome" Rhodes is honestly a performance for the ages. He's by turns charming, pitiful, and terrifying as he quickly ascends from an Arkansas county drunk tank to become a powerful media presence. The story is plotted conveniently but Griffith is utterly believable through the entire climb.Though Rhodes is the focus of the story, there's a great surrounding ensemble, too. The great Walter Mattheau has a strong supporting role as one of Rhodes' writers who eventually becomes disillusioned, and Patricia Neal is fantastic as the reporter who brings attention to Rhodes to begin with and tries to follow him all the way up. The performances are all amazing.Some personal speculation: I understand that Kazan was very demanding on Griffith during shooting, and that Griffith's experience on set was dark and difficult. His subsequent, more prosaic television career may well have been shaped by a desire to atone for his performance here.Kazan did this movie following his classic "On the Waterfront", and perhaps it's overshadowed unfairly. It's a great story of power, populism and corruption and deserves to be known more widely.

Hunter Lanier In 1957, "A Face in the Crowd" was conceived as a social satire, but in a modern context, it's a horror movie--horrifying for the simple fact that so much of it has become true. When parody melts off the screen and takes the shape of reality, reality should hop off a cliff and reassemble itself.Patricia Neal is Marcia "short for marshmallow" Jefferies, a radio journalist with a program called "A Face in the Crowd," in which she goes to ordinary places, turns on the microphone and lets ordinary people speak, sing or do whatever--think Alan Lomax. She comes across Larry Rhodes--whom she dubs "Lonesome"--(Andy Griffth), ramblin' man in both the oratory and traveling sense--think Woody Guthrie with personality.Lonesome is an instant media sensation, due to his fiery nature, brazen vernacular and woodsy charm. He spouts spittoon wisdom and pounds out half-baked folk songs; despite not doing anything perfect or proper, people sense his authenticity and eat it up. As happens when a bolt of lightening appears, businessmen everywhere hold up a jar in hopes of catching it. Before long, Lonesome is headlining television, having boats and mountains named after him and even becomes campaign advisory to the likely future president--thanks to Lonesome's help, of course. The film is a scathing indictment of celebrity culture, the media and the growing reliance of politics not on policy, but reliability. The film is more relevant today than it ever was--reality T.V., the invasion of media out of our living room and into our pockets, candidates going on SNL--and will probably grow in relevance as time goes on. Also on display is the entertainment industry's tendency to take something real and raw and cook it to a charred, black shell of its formal self--milking every last cent before moving on to the next thing.In a performance that could have been overplayed, Griffith takes the character to the furthest extreme without quite going over the edge. Like the audience inside the film, the audience outside the film's relationship with Lonesome is the same: he starts out charming and honest, but after power in introduced and his backwoods charm is perverted, he turns into a plastic version of himself, and both audiences turn against him. It's up to Griffith to pull off the subtle transformation without really changing the character; that he does. As Griffith gets the showier performance, it's easy to lose sight of the supporting characters, or even the co-lead, Patricia Neal, who's great as the bookish, regretful inventor of Lonesome--she's almost Oppenheimer-like--who gets suckered in just like everyone else. One of my all-time favorite cinematic pinch-hitters, Walter Matthau plays a writer commissioned to Lonesome. He's not so much the conscience of the film, but rather its brain ("All mild men are vicious. They hate themselves for being mild, and they hate the windy extroverts whose violence seems to have a strange attraction for nice girls who should know better").Among the upper-echelon of media mocking, "Ace in the Hole," "Network,"--both of which have become fact in one way or another-- sits comfortably "A Face in the Crowd." It shines a spotlight onto the dark side of entertainment, creating a "Scarface" for the media world, only more terrifying.

SnoopyStyle Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) is the host of the radio show "A Face in the Crowd" for a regional Arkansas station KGRK. She goes to the local jail of Tomahawk County to talk to the incarcerated. Among others, she finds the charming drunk Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith). She puts him on the air and he gathers a following as "Lonesome" Rhodes. Together they go and hit it big in Memphis, not just in music but as an advertising pitch man.This is sold as Elia Kazan's next great discovery after Marlon Brando and James Dean. Andy Griffith's does great in his film debut, but it's nothing quite so revolutionary. The story has quite a bit of bite but this is more about Griffith. He plays it really big. If there is any minor problem, there is something theatrical to it all that isn't quite real. He's definitely playing a role whether he's singing, or talking big, or laughing, or drunk acting. Part of that is the fact that the Lonesome character is actually play acting himself. He's a horrible drunk at his heart. If Griffith could put more vulnerability into his character, I think Lonesome would be a much more compelling character.