Thursday, July 14, 2005

Andy Griffith is a Star

If you are a cinemaphile, you haven't really lived until you have seen Elia Kazan's film, A Face in the Crowd. This feature stars Andy Griffith as Lonsome Rhodes, a criminal turned celebrity who is engulfed by the power his audience imbues him with through the new media called television. It is a meditative film on what people have foresaken for themselves and imbued celebrities with, the reason, rights, and power of decisionmaking for them.

In the new DVD release there is a short "making of" featurette where Budd Shulberg, the screenwriter speaks about creating the film with Elia Kazan during a greatly difficult period of history in Hollywood. Both he and Kazan had testified for Senator Joseph McCarthy in the HUAC and were outcasts to greater(Kazan) or lesser degrees in Hollywood due to the blacklist. Overall it is a solid script, brilliantly cast with Patricia Neal as the savy woman that builds Lonesome Rhodes career, yet is betrayed by his womanizing ways.

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