Review of A Face in the Crowd (1957) by Michael G — 27 Aug 2010

Andy Griffith steps through the Mayberry looking-glass to here portray a two-faced megalomaniac media personality and, in so doing, delivers one of the strongest dramatic film performances of the Twentieth Century.

The viewer will be entirely spellbound, awe-struck, by the gargantuan acting ability he/she never once suspected lurked under Andy's badge.

Griffith plays radio/TV star "Lonesome Rhodes," a folksy, likeable, good-ol-boy, Southern-drawlin' guitar picker. It's a role initially not much different at all from the characterization Griffith immortalized in his own 1960s TV series.

The slow reveal is that, as Griffith becomes increasingly successful on-camera, he becomes increasingly cruel, ambitious, cynical, manipulative, self-centered and self-destructive off-camera. With every flip of an on-air light, Griffith instantly morphs from down-home country boy into the most despicable of human beings, then back again. Delivering these two roles, each at the extreme, side-by-side, is undeniable testimony to Griffith's talent.

And when the possibility of national political office is thrown down on the table, it lights the short fuse on the powderkeg of narcissism that Griffith has become.

There's also a kegful of prescient topic on tap. Two decades before "Network," prescient in its own right, director Kazan here accuses the medium of television of its ability to deceive and manipulate its audience - and to destroy the personalities it creates.

And, in 1957, the viewer would have thought it strange possibility, perhaps even fantasy, that media stardom could be stepping stone to major politics. Hindsight reveals - through the likes of Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken and even Jerry Springer - that the line between the two arenas has become just as blurred as Kazan envisioned over fifty years ago.

RECOMMENDATION: For its topical and superlative acting content, essential viewing.