A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Film: A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Stars: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick
Director: Elia Kazan
Oscar History: Despite being hailed as a masterpiece in recent years, at the time it received mixed reviews, and scored no nominations despite a DGA citation.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Last month I did something I have wanted to do since it started in the Twin Cities, but never quite pulled the trigger.  Each month, my favorite theater does a "Secret Movie" night where you can buy tickets to a movie having no idea what is playing.  It's not a current film (it'll be a classic, though potentially a new classic like Dreamgirls or Memento), and it has the regular trailers followed by the film just starting.  I didn't go to the fancier version (with a Q&A and a cocktail hour), so I had, for the first time in my life, the thrill of sitting in a movie theater as if it was Christmas morning, opening a present that I didn't know the contents  It took me a few seconds as the opening whistles erupted before I saw the opening placards and realized that we were watching A Face in the Crowd, the 1957 classic that has become more culturally significant in the past few years as the film has drawn comparisons to the rise of Donald Trump (likely why the picture ended up being chosen in the first place, though I have since gone to a different secret film that had no obvious modern connection so that may have just been a coincidence).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Marcia Jeffries (Neal), a local radio host who goes around trying to discover talent in Arkansas, interviewing a drunken drifter named Larry Rhodes (Griffith), who sings a song for her and charms the audiences with folksy humor and stories.  Rhodes becomes a hit for Jeffries, and he lands a television show under the guise "Lonesome" Rhodes, which gains a national following.  The movie progresses with Rhodes becoming an important entertainment figure with a national show, all-the-while letting the fame get to his head.  He takes advantage of his relationship with Jeffries, the only person who sees him as a good man and not an opportunist or something you can make money or gain power from, and and eventually marries a young majorette (Remick) who quickly starts an affair with Rhodes' manager, who thanks to an iron-clad contract, Rhodes can't fire.  Eventually Rhodes starts to play into politics, campaigning for someone whose politics seem very alien to the core supporters of Rhodes, but because they like Rhodes' charm and "relatability," they support this senator's bid for the presidency, knowing that if he's elected Rhodes will be put in his cabinet and could even assume greater, concrete power in America.  In the end, Jeffries trips Rhodes up while he's making disparaging remarks about his fans, making his microphone go live, and thus ending his career.  The film's final moments are Rhodes screaming into the night as Marcia hurries away, knowing that the folksy drifter she met was not the real person behind the mask, but instead it was the violent, power-hungry guy whom she revealed to the entire world.

If this sounds like a very clear portrait of Donald Trump, well, those were my thoughts too.  There's a terrific monologue that Walter Matthau gives toward the end of the picture where he says that Rhodes will eventually become famous again, but never as much as before, and it will never feel like enough.    He'll always be famous, there will be an appetite for someone who used to be famous, but it will always be smaller each time he emerges.  This feels so appropriate in this era of celebrity commodification (with endless reality shows and "celebrity" competitions), and of course it's probably true of Donald Trump.  Trump will eventually fall, and like Rhodes will never be as famous or as important again, but his specter will never entirely disappear.  But Kazan's tale has a universality that means every era could find its Lonesome Rhodes, whether it's Trump or Jimmy Swaggart or Glenn Beck or whatever peddler of lies hallmarks an era.

Even without the shocking political foresight, though, A Face in the Crowd is a marvelous film, due in many ways to the pitch-perfect performance by Andy Griffith.  Griffith, known to so many of us for his work as Andy Taylor or Ben Matlock on television, is staggering to watch as he descends into a ruthless madness.  The work here is a complete live-wire act that I didn't know he had in him, in many ways feeling like Michael Keaton in Birdman or Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, and even though it wasn't particularly well-regarded in 1957, it still stuns me that such work wasn't nominated for an Academy Award, as it more-than-deserved it.  Neal and Matthau are giving strong work as well, but it's Griffith and screenwriter Budd Schulberg who are doing the heavy-lifting here, making this feel vibrant, terrifying, and all-too-real some sixty years later.  It's hard to imagine all secret movie nights could be this good, as few movies can feel this pressing and classic in a first viewing.