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From: upstill@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Steve Upstill)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: A Great Movie
Message-ID: <10796@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 12:34:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10796
Posted: Fri Oct 25 12:34:22 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 07:39:26 EDT
References: <443@npois.UUCP> <1462@videovax.UUCP>
Reply-To: upstill@ucbvax.UUCP (Steve Upstill)
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 41


   When you've been a film buff as long as I have, it's a rare and welcome
event to see a great film for the first time.  It's even rarer to see a film
you'd hardly heard of, one that has almost no recognition as a classic, and
have it jump immediately into your all-time ten best list.  I saw a movie
like that last Wednesday.  Its title is "A Face in the Crowd".

   Andy Griffith (yes!) stars as a small-time drunk who we first see in jail
being interviewed for a local radio program called "A Face in the Crowd".  The
film chronicles his rise to a superstar of the early days of television, his
effect on his audience, and the effect of his popularity on him.  Patricia
Neal (who?) is the woman who first interviews him, and later loves him,
futilely.

   The picture was directed by Elia Kazan (Streetcar Named Desire, On THe
Waterfront, East of Eden) from a script by Budd Schulberg.  Released in 1957,
this represents the pinnacle of Hollywood social-consciousness filmmaking,
not because of some mushy-headed "message", but due to its astonishing 
insight into the new beast of television, and the power with which it carries
the viewer to share it.  In one scene, Andy Griffith's character gives a 
two-sentence summary of the nature of the change television would bring to
politics that chilled me to the bone.

   Schulberg's script is a work of literature.  I never heard a wrong line
or an off-character moment, and Griffith's character is as vivid in my mind
as a real human being can be.  Kazan's direction makes you realize the 
possibilities of the film medium.  Patricia Neal is admirable, and Walter
Matthau is excellent as a "college-boy" observer of the whole scene. But it
is Andy Griffith who really blew me away.  This is the performance of a 
lifetime (his first in a film), and I consider it a major tragedy that he
is not considered one of our great actors (maybe because he has a Southern
accent?).  His is an epic role, both in sweep and detail, and he carried
it off without a single misstep, without a trace of artifice or craft.  Try
as I might, I never once saw anyone but Lonesome Rhodes up there on the
screen.

   You might get the idea that I liked this picture.  You would be correct.
I only hope others will see it and be as amazed as I still am, two days later.
This is the scariest movie I've seen in a long time, maybe forever.

Steve Upstill