Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday.
This week sees the (limited) release of “Late Night,” which is set in the wild and revealing world of late night TV. It’s the latest of many examples of how the movies have sometimes been able to see television more clearly than television has been able to see itself.
This week’s question: What is the best movie ever made about television?
“A Face in the Crowd”
Q.V. Hough (@QVHough), Vague Visages, Screen Rant, RogerEbert.com
Released in 1957, Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd” remains a fascinating study about TV production and celebrity culture. Specifically, the film underlines the idea that trendy celebrities will stay relevant as long as they don’t do anything, well, horrible.
Andy Griffith delivers one of the most powerful feature debut performance as the drifter-turned-celebrity Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes,...
This week sees the (limited) release of “Late Night,” which is set in the wild and revealing world of late night TV. It’s the latest of many examples of how the movies have sometimes been able to see television more clearly than television has been able to see itself.
This week’s question: What is the best movie ever made about television?
“A Face in the Crowd”
Q.V. Hough (@QVHough), Vague Visages, Screen Rant, RogerEbert.com
Released in 1957, Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd” remains a fascinating study about TV production and celebrity culture. Specifically, the film underlines the idea that trendy celebrities will stay relevant as long as they don’t do anything, well, horrible.
Andy Griffith delivers one of the most powerful feature debut performance as the drifter-turned-celebrity Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes,...
- 6/10/2019
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Stars: Patricia Neal, Andy Griffith, Walter Matthau, Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick | Written by Budd Schulberg | Directed by Elia Kazan
In a tiny Arkansas town, local radio reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) makes a visit to the local jailhouse to do a story on the inmates. She’s expecting anecdotes and maybe a song or two. What she finds is Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a bawdy and brilliantly charismatic drifter, who steals the show in any room he occupies.
Marcia offers Larry a slot on her radio station. He’s soon a local celebrity, whipping the locals into a frenzy, inciting them to take action against the mayor and his cronies. Via a calculating agent named Joey (Anthony Franciosa), Larry gains the attention of the big networks and advertisers. Before long he’s hit the big time, with his own show in New York, through which he sells pharmaceuticals to a national audience,...
In a tiny Arkansas town, local radio reporter Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) makes a visit to the local jailhouse to do a story on the inmates. She’s expecting anecdotes and maybe a song or two. What she finds is Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a bawdy and brilliantly charismatic drifter, who steals the show in any room he occupies.
Marcia offers Larry a slot on her radio station. He’s soon a local celebrity, whipping the locals into a frenzy, inciting them to take action against the mayor and his cronies. Via a calculating agent named Joey (Anthony Franciosa), Larry gains the attention of the big networks and advertisers. Before long he’s hit the big time, with his own show in New York, through which he sells pharmaceuticals to a national audience,...
- 5/7/2019
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
Elia Kazan never stopped making great pictures, but much of his output after 1952 was politically defensive in nature. This powerful indictment of American media madness is a genuine classic, but it also points up the need for ‘good folk’ to sometimes betray their associates. The target this time around is the most kill-worthy monster in the history of sardonic satire: Lonesome Rhodes, a faux-populist master manipulator of the pushover public. Kazan and Budd Schulberg’s premise has come to pass in real life, but their silver bullet of truth has lost its power: even when unmasked publicly, some media monsters thrive.
A Face in the Crowd
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 970
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 125 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 23, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick.
Cinematography: Gayne Rescher, Harry Stradling
Art Direction: Paul Sylbert, Richard Sylbert
Film Editor: Gene Milford
Original...
A Face in the Crowd
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 970
1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 125 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 23, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick.
Cinematography: Gayne Rescher, Harry Stradling
Art Direction: Paul Sylbert, Richard Sylbert
Film Editor: Gene Milford
Original...
- 4/16/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Andy Griffith and Ernest Borgnine were early, trend-setting examples of stars who made the transition from movies to television, often (in Borgnine’s case) oscillating between them. And because they both jumped mediums, Griffith and Borgnine, who died within a week of each other (Griffith on July 3, Borgnine on July 8), had fans of every phase of their career who didn’t necessarily overlap. Yet during this last week or so, as I thought back over the many, many decades of pleasure that both these actors had given us, I kept returning to what were, for me, their two greatest performances.
- 7/18/2012
- by Owen Gleiberman
- EW - Inside Movies
A Face In The Crowd (1957) Director: Elia Kazan Cast: Patricia Neal, Andy Griffith, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick, Percy Waram, Paul McGrath, Marshall Neilan, Alexander Kirkland, Kay Medford Screenplay: Budd Schulberg; from his short story "Your Arkansas Traveler" Patricia Neal, Andy Griffith, A Face in the Crowd Elia Kazan’s 1957 drama A Face in the Crowd, written by Kazan's On the Waterfront collaborator Budd Schulberg, is neither the forgotten masterpiece its champions claim it to be nor a minor work to be disregarded as it was for several decades. In fact, A Face in the Crowd is a good though clearly flawed effort, whose chief weaknesses are a screenplay that gets bogged down in soap-operatic didacticism and Andy Griffith's over-the-top film debut as Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes, a Will Rogers-like homespun philosopher who rises from drunken jailbird to national kingmaker. On the positive side, A Face in the Crowd...
- 1/25/2012
- by Dan Schneider
- Alt Film Guide
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