In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
Actor Andy Griffith is famous for creating folksy, endearing characters like small-town sheriff Andy Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968) and defense attorney Ben Matlock in Matlock (1986-1995). But Griffith had a much greater range as an actor than he showed in his most popular roles, and one of the best ways to see some of what else he could do is to watch Elia Kazan’s 1957 film A Face in the Crowd, starring Griffth (in his film debut) as drifter Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes who rises to fame and fortune through the then-fairly-new medium of national television. Budd Schulberg wrote the screenplay, adapting his own short story “Your Arkansas Traveler,” which should tip you off that watching this film is not going to be a warm and fuzzy experience.
When we first meet Larry Rhodes, he’s sleeping off a drunk in the Tomahawk County Jail somewhere in northeast Arkansas and is less than delighted at being awakened by reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal). She’s looking for material for her radio program “A Face in the Crowd” (not the last on-the-nose moment in this film, but it’s more allegory than naturalist drama, so go with it) and Rhodes is offered good time by the sheriff if he cooperates. Knowing a good thing when he hears it, he accepts the nickname “Lonesome Rhodes” by Jeffries and improvises a blues which gets him out of the clink and onto the airwaves.
It’s an old cliché in show biz that sincerity is the most important thing—and once you to fake that, you’re all set. Rhodes is a master of projecting sincerity, and this ability is both his greatest talent and his biggest liability. He becomes a radio star in the mold of Will Rogers, telling folksy stories and expressing sentiments that get the audience on his side, while in more private moments he reveals a darker, meaner side. Watching Griffith perform these changes will leave no question in your mind that he was a talented actor with more than one gear (strategic use of an eye light doesn’t hurt either).
A Face in the Crowd is as much a critique of the power of mass media, and of the susceptibility of the American public to messages delivered via it, as it is the dissection of one character who found a new career exploiting it. Rhodes has help along the way, of course, including radio writer Mel Miller (Walter Matthau, who gets a killer speech) and business manager Joey DePalma (Anthony Franciosa). He falls in with the fascist General Haynesworth (Percy Waram) and his political protégé Worthington Fuller (Marshall Neilam), whom Haynesworth aims to put in the White House. While Rhodes’ rapid rise to fame may have seemed like a cautionary tale in 1957, today it seems more like a documentary, except perhaps for the fact that the Hays Code imposed a degree of morality generally missing in real life.
A Face in the Crowd got mixed reviews when it was first released but has since been recognized as a classic. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2008, meaning it was selected for preservation by the National Film Preservation Board. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 970
Technical details: 126 min.; B&W; screen ratio 1.85:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD
Extras: video interviews with Ron Briley (author of The Ambivalent Legacy of Elia Kazan), Evan Dalton Smith (Andy Griffith biographer), 2005 featurette “Facing the Past,” the film’s trailer, and booklet with an essay by critic April Wolfe, excerpts with Elia Kazan’s introduction to the film’s screenplay, and a New York Times Magazine profile of Griffith.
Fun Fact: Lee Remick made her film debut in this picture as a teenage baton whirler and one of Rhodes’ love interests.
Parting Thought: I’m reluctant to have anything to do with films that involve Elia Kazan, given how quickly he caved to HUAC and informed on his friends and colleagues once his career was threatened, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to refuse to acknowledge works of art made by reprehensible people, because by that standard exactly what would be left? So I’ll just acknowledge what an absolute shit Kazan was as a person while also saying that I really admire his work on this film.
