“A Face In the Crowd.” What a Film!
Watched an amazing film during these holidays; it is as thoughtful as it is fun to watch. Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). To say that the film is stunning is to say very little.
At first, I wasn’t even interested in watching it. It is an old black and white drama, starring goody too shoes Andy Griffith. Directed by a rather controversial Elia Kazan, disliked for naming names during McCarthyism. And I never liked his On the Waterfront, always falling asleep in the middle lulled by its bleak scenery and by Brando's overacting. Furthermore, some recent liberal critics began to maintain that the film predicts Trump as it exposes unhealthy alliance between populism, media, and politics. Another exposé of Trump? How boring. Haven't we seen Great Dictator already?
Yet, the film steals you from the get-go, and it never lets off. Griffith is stunning, exhibiting raw power, talent, folksy wisdom and charm. He is a risk taker, he feels what people feel; he knows their fixation both on consumer goods and authority figures. Eventually, he begins to wield power and not accustomed to it, he is rather awkward and sloppy, especially when abusing it. Yes, he is flawed: a manipulative and ambitious cheater who clearly hurts the feelings of those who trust him.
Patricia Neal is a smart classy lady smitten by the talented drunk, Griffith, whom she finds in jail and turns into a music and TV celebrity.
The film is relentless in its cynicism. Everyone lies and manipulates, each person is using another, everyone tries to convert power into image, image into power and so on. Politicians and advertisers need TV, TV needs politicians and advertisers. They all need entertainers, who in turn need ratings to squeeze more power out of politicians and advertisers.
It is a dog eats dog world for sure, and the charming yet conniving drifter, Griffith, gets shocked by amount of power that he's amassed. But at least he got it due to his talent and his ability to relate to common people. He has a perfect ear not just for music, but for hearing what people feel, and for saying what they think or what they want to hear.
Yet, for whatever reasons (personal or political) the makers of the film, wanted the middlebrow values to triumph. Patricia Neal - -Griffith's manager — finds the way to ruin him. The establishment had chew Griffith up and spit him out. And then there is obnoxious Walter Matthaw, Vanderbilt graduate— a pretentious journalist who’d be at home in NYT if not New Yorker, jealous of Neal's fascination with Griffith, and hellbent on derailing such a dangerous and ambitious personality.
Why is Griffith more dangerous than any lying deceitful politician, businessman, journalist or TV personality which we see in this film is unclear. But all those Yale and Vanderbilt grads populating the corporate and political offices or TV studios in their suits, have decided that they had enough of him.
Great performances and gripping story make this film even more memorable. But what stays with you at the end is not Griffith whom the establishment had finally abandoned to his private madness, but the cynicism and smug complacency of the establishment, that feels that they can solve its problems by getting rid of an ambitious guy who wanted to play by his own rules.
And another stunning aspect of the film: it totally flopped on release! I guess \, the critics were not willing to give Kazan a break, while the public was not ready to see itself in a mirror. Americans, like any other young and ambitious nation, never are.
Great French director, François Truffaut, loved the film, however, and immediately singled it out: “The usual fault with ‘honest’ films is their softness, timidity and anesthetic neutrality. The film is passionate, exalted, fierce, as inexorable as a ‘Mythology’ of Roland Barthes – and, like it, a pleasure of the mind.”
