There is a Black Mirror episode, That Waldo Moment, which fearsomely predicts the effects of social media on politics.
Several news reports, including one by Chris Cillizza, political reporter for The Washington Post, compared Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to the episode. In September 2016, episode writer Charlie Brooker also compared the Trump campaign to "The Waldo Moment" and predicted Trump would win the 2016 election. ...... On the night of the election, at the hour when Trump's victory was becoming clear to the nation, Black Mirror sent out a tweet proclaiming: "This isn't an episode. This isn't marketing. This is reality."
A Face In The Crowd is a fantastically entertaining movie from the 1950s with a very similar premise, warning not about social media, but mass media. It's skipped recognition until recently for what was perceived to be a nauseatingly cynical tone. Post 2016 it looks like an absolute classic, with elements of contemporary movies such as Sweet Smell of Success and later classics such as Network. It is as sharp and acerbic and bitter as Fight Club, with a powerful ending weirdly reminiscent of Scarface.
"You gotta be a saint to stand all the power that little box can give you."
A Face in The Crowd been getting some long overdue recogntion over the pond (for reasons which will be obvious) but seems mostly unknown in the wider world. A shame as this could be a story about the rise of Jeremy Clarkson as anyone else.
A travelling radio show run by a roaming archivist/music producer finds herself in a jail in rural Arkansas where she comes a showman of the highest order in the form of a drunken folk guitarist. She takes him from small time radio, to television personality to the highest political circles before realising the monster she's unleashed.
I learned of this movie listening to a Slate podcast
that in an earlier article called it
The Best Movie About Television That You've Never Seen
"Is it possible for a movie to be selected for the National Film Registry and still be underrated? Everyone who owns a TV set needs to know that A Face in the Crowd is unsurpassed as the great American story about television. "
and that was in 2009.
The director, Elia Kazan, had a history of socially conscious movie making such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954) which brought him the attention of the McCarthyite anti communist witchhunt of the 50s. When making this movie he was filled with disillusionment, having seen so many of his ideals betrayed by Stalinist purges in the USSR. It shows.
Director Stanley Kubrick called him, "without question, the best director we have in America, capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses." For all it's non recognition in that year's awards ceremonies and since, this movie must have launched a thousand careers as all the acting parts have a familiar face.
In an era of perfectionist actors such as Marlon Brando, for the lead role A Face in The Crowd, as the mesmerizing con-man personality Lonesome Rhodes, Kazan picked a standup comedian. Andy Griffith is dynamite, and it's almost a tragedy that after this movie he become entombed in folksy straight version roles of the evil creep he plays in this movie. (I'm underplaying this because I'm the wrong generation to appreciate it... the truth is After A Face in The Crowd Andy Griffith became perhaps the most beloved tv personality on US tv for four decades.)
Patricia Neal plays the producer who discovers Rhodes, and who promotes him into the wider media world while being unable to keep him out of her bed. Neal was unforgettable as the Mary figure to Klaatu's Jesus in The Day The Earth Stood Still (she was also Mrs Ronald Dalh). She has to be tragic and smart and the character could have stepped straight from a modern drama set in the era such as Mad Men. Scenes where she is still covering and making a excuses for Rhode's, when he’s treated her and everyone she respects like dirt I'm sure will be familiar to many.
Along with the modern political signifance this is also a period #METOO story told with compassion. The scene when she is preparing for her marriage to Rhodes, only to be confronted with the first wife, is heartbreaking stuff
"... he thinks he has to take a bite out of every broad he comes across. Then he calls them a tramp, drops them, and there's all sort of psycho something-or-other, you know. I caught him red-handed with my best girlfriend. He broke my jaw."
Shortly after this Rhodes appears from a trip to Mexico with a completely different wife (played by a very young Lee Remick, yet another star making performance)
Walter Matthau fans should definitely check out what is effectively his his star maker role as Mel Miller, an initially mild mannered writer for Rhodes who comes to see him for what he is and hate him with everyone else. The loathing initialy includes himself, for not being yet another Alpha Male in Rhode's pack of jackals. As he unloads to Neal's character;
"Didn't you know? All mild men are vicious. They hate themselves for being mild, and they hate the windy extroverts whose violence seems to have a strange attraction for nice girls."
Mocked for his education as “Vanderbilt ‘44” by Rhodes, he eventually gets to deliver a delicious coup de gras.
But it's Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes who will haunt you afterwards. On his journey towards "Secretary for National Morale" he utters a whole series of quotes which would thrill a MAGA crowd.
There is a whole internet industry drawing current political significance from this movie.
How Andy Griffith And Elia Kazan Predicted Donald Trump’s Rise (And Fall?) Way Back In 1957’s ‘A Face In The Crowd’
The movie that foretold the rise of Donald Trump
Not even a movie as cynical as A Face In The Crowd could predict Donald Trump
But for all the apparent similarities personally I think we may have gone beyond a point where this great movie is predictive.
<SPOILER>
Rhodes is brought down by a recording. This is difficult to imagine currently. With the knowledge we have now, we know Rhode's supporters would laugh off any recording as Fake and any opposition as Lonesome Rhodes Derangement Syndrome.
But A Face in The Crowd does have one final moment of relevance in it's minor Twilight Zone twist. At the end Patricia Neal's character actually apologises to Rhodes, coming to realise that she is the originator of the problem, as the person who took him from deserved obscurity into the homes of the nation.
I've been saying for a while now, the real problem isn't with the scumbag opportunist. It's with his enablers.
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