I saw a great old movie on media/politics tonight: "A Face in the Crowd"

I had never seen it before. Our art museum was showing it as part of a series of films. The movie is 50 years old this year.

Let me just say 'Wow!'

This movie is so timely, even though it is 50 years old. Esssentially, it's about a hayseed/thug who figures out how to manipulate the ignorant and uneducated through the media (radio/tv) and becomes famous and a megomaniac. Think Rush Limbaugh. Eventually he gets into pushing bad politicians onto the public by manipulating the public through lies and bullshit.

If you haven't seen this film before and are looking for a good old flick one night, this one is worth seeing.

With Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush in our lives now, this movie is positively chilling.

One of my Top 5 all-time fave movies is No Time for Segeants - and while looking at inter-bits of info on that - noticed this one you are talking about.

Didn't know what it was about, though.

I hope Netflix just might have it!

Thanks for posting this, Lex.

in this film. Truly chilling as the film goes on.

Patricia Neal was fantastic in this too, and smoulders. And Lee Remick is in for a few scenes and is sooo young, basically a teenage girl.

Walter Mattheau is a young, clean cut fellow in the movie.

And the reviews are ALL 5 stars.

Can't wait!

It's a similar quality that made No Time for Sergeants one of my all-time faves.

For those who don't know - this was the original Gomer Pyle concept. Hillbilly kid gets drafted and turns the Air Force upside-down through his unnerving cheerfulness, honesty and disingenuousness. The "Gomer" character is played by Andy Griffith and is named Will Stockdale.

But Griffith gives the character layers of realness that Gomer never had. This is Gomer as a real person. Just amazing. Griffith had depth that just didn't get used after the 50's for some reason.

(And Mervyn LeRoy gives the "Sergeant Carter" character a twist that is both realistic and totally unexpected in any Sergeant).

The movie goes weirdly off-track in the last 10 minutes - it really seems like an utterly different (and inferior) movie has been tacked on for some reason. BUT still, highly recommended!

Besides Lonesome Rhodes, I remember a couple of TV movies where he turned in absolutely chilling performances.

She was beautiful... and she died quite young from cancer.



http://www.us.imdb.com/name/nm0001665/

But a mere teeny bopper in this film. Very young! (Played a high school senior baton-twirler in this film.)

**

Andy Griffith was brilliant as Lonesome Rhodes; a big part of his role was shading of Arthur Godfrey's career that was flaming out by that time.

One of the 10 best films of the 50's, and that's saying something. I love Walter Matthau's speech at the end, too..

to Lonesome Rhodes. So true. Then and now.

You could've heard a pin drop in the theater after that.

He's really a very good actor, especially in his early films, and I remember being impressed with Lee Remick, always a favorite of mine. I must see this film again, with your perspective in mind, since I saw it a lot of years ago, on TV, though I understand what you mean. Thanks. :-)

I once had a professor who compared him to James O'Neill (Eugene's father) Both excellent actors who unfortunately became identified with a single role. That comparison has always stuck with me.

(I was a theater and lit minor :-) ) It's very appropriate, and is now going to stick with me...:D

The thing is, Andy Griffith has always been active and has done so many roles, especially on TV. "Matlock" is on practically every night, somewhere, but people still identify him with Andy Taylor. I have to admit that I really like that show, will watch it if I run across it. It's a feel-good show that will never become dated, unlike most.:-)

I also used to write about TV, and appreciate good TV writing, which is becoming a thing of the past, with the proliferation of reality shows.x(

great script, great performances...everything.

And, while I'm not a fan of remakes/updates, for years I have thought that "A Face In The Crowd" could be remade with the Rhodes character as a "from the street" rapper who achieves widespread success and becomes a tool of political/corporatist interests.
Great...I've probably just given a "creative" type who is reading this an idea that they can take to the bank. Oh well...

need to get my hands on the new DVD... thanks for the reminder!

scheduled to be shown on March 17th at 10:00 pm, April 13th at 9:45 pm and May 26 at 2:00 pm.

http://allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:84965~T1

A movie truly ahead of its time, Ace in the Hole (also known as The Big Carnival) turned out to be too bitter and cynical for moviegoers in 1951. An unrelenting portrait of media sensationalism and the human obsession with tragedy that propels it, the film is based on a true story that also spawned Robert Penn Warren's novel The Cave. Director, screenwriter, and producer Billy Wilder suffered perhaps the biggest commercial and critical failure of his career with Ace, losing much of his standing at Paramount, even though the movie was released between two of his most enduring and popular triumphs, Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Stalag 17 (1953). Ace was perhaps not up to the standard of those works, but it clearly stands as one of Wilder's many achievements. It's hardly surprising that this film failed to find a mainstream audience, despite the added attraction of emerging star Kirk Douglas in the lead. American culture wouldn't be ready for such a large dose of pessimism until the 1970s; even then, a film such as 1976's Network, which clearly paralleled the tone of Wilder's effort, was dismissed by many viewers as too hysterical.

http://www.tcmdb.com/title/title.jsp?stid=66745

March 17th and 12 PM (BTW, it's sometimes called THE BIG CARNIVAL on TCM)

Ace in the Hole greets the new movie year like a punch in the gut, a kick in the nuts, a bucket of bile flung in the face. Hello, nasty! And welcome to the Army of Shadows club, reserved for tough old bastards who survived the shaft to bask in acclaim. Melville's masterpiece clicked with audiences by striking the perfect note (dour, fatalistic) at the perfect moment (Bush II twilight) with a chic fantasy of stoic resistance. It helped, of course, to be perfectly made. The same can't be said for Billy Wilder's undeserved 1951 flop, returned to Film Forum in a fresh 35mm print, but hot goddamn! Here is, half a century out of the past, a movie so acidly au courant it stings: a lurid pulp indictment of exploitation, opportunism, doctored intelligence, torture for profit, insatiable greed, and shady journalism.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0702,lee,75507,20.html

But..we know him for Andy Taylor and Matlock.
He doesn't mind and has said so.

and now lives somewhere down at the coast here in NC, if I recall correctly.

A truly beloved NC son.

In "No Time for Sergeants".
Wow!

And Andy can really off acting like a jerk. He was an evil judge in one of those made for TV movies. Great actor, and he can sting and get down.

Patricia Neal was wonderful but she was way too nice to him and should've just pushed him down on the bed instead of being the shadow woman being a "nice girl." I thought the ending was pretty cool with him shouting to no one and amping up the cheers and clapping.