A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957) written by Budd Schulberg and directed by Elia Kazan lays out a frighteningly prescient view of mass media manipulation crossed with a dangerous cult of personality. Almost 60 years later, this film makes Schulberg and Kazan more accurate than Nostradamus in their corrosive depiction of a gullible public wooed and seduced by a braying charlatan and his cynical media enablers. Any of this sound familiar yet?
Schulberg's script creates one of cinema's greatest Frankenstein monsters.....not one created in a mad scientist's lab, but assembled by ratings-hungry media executives and beamed out to millions of unsuspecting listeners and viewers. The monster here is Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith,a long way from Mayberry RFD) a mean spirited, dissolute hobo transformed overnight into a radio-TV sensation with a faux-folksy 'good ole boy' persona effectively camouflaging his truly vile, ruthless personality. Lonesome uses his new bully pulpit as a radio and and TV raconteur to wield absolute power over networks, advertisers, politicians seeking his favor....and most terrifying of all....public opinion. (Schulberg's real inspiration here was Arthur Godfrey, a much beloved CBS TV host later revealed to the public as a hot-tempered, power mad bully)
As for the architects of Lonesome's ascendancy (Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau, Anthony Franciosca), they discover too late what a slimy creature they've unleashed upon America. By the time it dawns on them, Lonesome is already schooling witless politicos on how to sell themselves like a new brand of toothpaste....or a new Lonesome Rhodes. Some of Schulberg's scenes here will take your breath away in their on-the-money predictions of the pop culture circus we wallow in today.....the sequence where Lonesome instructs a drug company exec on how to market his worthless, placebo 'energy' pills is grimly hilarious. But take a look at your own medicine cabinet before you laugh.
The only major difference between Schulberg and Kazan's 1957 vision and 2016 events is the fate they concocted for Lonesome.....as opposed to, well, let's say our current situation. In the 1950's, even a voyage into the darkest aspect of humanity like "A Face In The Crowd" required a moral light at the end of the tunnel. Audiences of that era wouldn't tolerate anything less...(witness 1956's "The Bad Seed", in which Warner Brothers had to hurl a climactic lightning bolt at child-murderess Patty McCormack or risk the censors' wrath) But in our uncivil age, where we've just a elected a President who brags about sexual assault, those rules don't apply.....a Lonesome Rhodes can triumph.
If you haven't seen this film yet, check it out NOW.....if you haven't seen it in some time, watch it again for a refresher course as you compare it to what we're living through. Beached Quill liked the movie's ending way better than today's ending.....but then, we live in a different time, don't we?....sigh.......BQ awards the FIND OF FINDS....5 bigly, huuuuuge stars.
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