Rent A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Not Quite the Masterpiece - A Face in the Crowd review by griggs

Honestly, A Face in the Crowd is a solid but slightly overlong drama that feels uncannily timely. Andy Griffith is shockingly intense here, delivering an unhinged, anxiety-inducing performance that genuinely put me on edge. In fact, his portrayal is so powerful that the film isn’t actually that enjoyable—it’s more stressful than entertaining. What hooked me was how eerily relevant this film is to today’s politics. Lonesome Rhodes is basically a 1950s version of Donald Trump—it’s almost spooky how similar they are. Both men build a “man of the people” image despite being wealthy and well-connected. They manipulate the media (radio/TV then, TV/social media now) to captivate audiences, even mocking their own followers behind closed doors. Their massive egos crave constant attention and only grow more erratic as their influence expands. Worth watching, but not quite the masterpiece, some claim.

American Sociopath - A Face in the Crowd review by Steve

This is among a wave of postwar Hollywood pictures which aim to alert us to a new kind of cynicism in US capitalism and laissez-faire government. It’s like an update of Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941) but takes in another gallery of demons: commercial television, showbiz politics and huckster advertising.

Which describes present day America. It’s surprising Elia Kazan went near scriptwriter Budd Schulberg’s venomous polemic, given his kowtow before the scrutiny of HUAC in ’52. But this is unambiguously a bomb thrown at populist corporate politics. Maybe the explosive never quite goes off, but this is acutely prescient.

Andy Griffith gives a once in a lifetime (debut) performance as an alcoholic bum who sings the blues and has an angle into the low-education hive mentality of the masses, particularly in the fly-over states. The sociopathic cunning of his bogus man-of-the-people schtick proves to be more useful in the Whitehouse than the jailhouse.

Patricia Neal instils welcome humanity as the small town radio producer who unleashes the monster but can’t live with the consequences. Kazan directs the Americana of all this trashy corruption with caustic realism. There is more anger than intelligence, but that may even be another asset. It’s a big surprise the Oscars didn’t call.