A Face In The Crowd

Directed by Elia Kazan. Written by Budd Schulberg. Starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, and Anthony Franciosa.

Newtown Productions - 1957

Four Stars of Review! ****

Andy Griffith has a true gift for injecting a certain subtlety and slyness into over the top characters. Remember the eye chart joke in “No Time For Sergeants?” Watch the look on his face. It's one of the most memorable laughs in my entire life, and it's that quality that makes “ A Face In The Crowd,” a truly great film.

Here he plays Larry Rhodes, a hard drinking sociopath who goes from drifter to media god. He's discovered by Marcia Jeffries who runs a local radio program called “Face In The Crowd.” Think of it as something like early radio's version of reality TV. Rhodes is in the local jail, locked up for a week on a drunk and disorderly charge, but is promised to be let out early if he performs a song. Marcia not only gets a song, but a boisterous diatribe aimed at the local sheriff as well, and it's obvious from the start that Rhodes is a commodity worth exploiting.

The man is out spoken, electrifying, and appears to be one of those uncompromising every man types that won't let advertisers tell him what he can and can't say. Of course this is all apart of the illusion. Rhodes knows what certain ideas can buy him, and he's willing to manipulate his audience in a way that even the money men haven't dreamed of.

The genius of Griffith's performance is that he makes us believe the lies. We're sucked into the events and begin to believe that even Rhodes buys into his own babble, but with little more than a gesture or a single line Griffith reminds us what Rhodes is really about.

Director Elia Kazan (On the Water Front, East of Eden) expertly establishes mood with a gritty almost Film Nior look that has characters constantly moving amongst the deep shadows that Rhodes seems to cast on every place he visits. He assaults us with products that are little more than snake oil, jingles sung by pretty girls, and Rhodes is pulling the strings just as much as his are being pulled. It's a damning commentary on media manipulation that feels contemporary and almost shocking 50 years later. Consider a scene where Rhodes and his army of image consultants coach a U.S. Senator who has his eyes on the Presidency:

“What you need are sticker slogans.” One of them says “Like: It's time for a change!”

Sound familiar?

Available on DVD.