Elia Kazan, one of the most important names in the history of cinema, is the director who sparked a lot of artistic and political controversy and renewed the film industry and influenced generations of filmmakers. An extraordinary story on the artistic and personal level, and a busy career that spanned more than thirty years during which he directed only 19 feature films. The peak of his work was in the fifties, when in that decade he directed many immortal works in the history of cinema, such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, and his last film of that decade, which we are discussing here, A Face in the Crowd.
A Face in the Crowd
After a successful collaboration between Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg in the film On the Waterfront (1954), they produced again, three years later, A Face in the Crowd (1957), where Budd Schulberg goes back to the short story he wrote by the same name and turned it himself into a screenplay for the big screen. For Kazan to assign the then-new actor Andy Griffith the starring role in one of his most daring and edgier films (many consider it the most important and best role he has ever played), is a bold step that perhaps no director would dare take, as the “star” is definitely one of the most important elements that attracts the audience and achieves the desired widespread of the film.
A Star is Born
The film begins with different images of the state of Arkansas: the streets, the buildings, the people, and the general atmosphere (Kazan pays attention to the sense of place in his films and the connection of his characters to it). It does not take long to introduce us to his main characters, as the presenter of the “Face in the Crowd” radio program, Marcia, goes to one of the state’s prisons to run a radio interview with prisoners.
Here we learn about the main character, Larry, who is imprisoned on charges of excessive drinking. Marcia learns from the other prisoners that Larry is an accomplished guitarist and singer. She asks him to perform a song for her radio program. He meets her with stubborn resistance and rejection but accepts this request after the director tells him that if he sings for the program, he will be released tomorrow morning. He picks up his guitar and improvises a song inspired by the moment, the song “Free Man in the Morning.” As soon as he picks up his guitar, Larry radiates an extraordinary charisma and vitality, an energy and presence that captivates everyone around him, which prompts Marcia to think about including him on the radio, which is what happens.
Larry starts working on Arkansas Radio at his designated hour every morning, which surprises Marcia and the entire radio crew. Larry does not just sing on his hour, but rather tells stories, makes jokes, and speaks in a free spirit to the people of Arkansas. A real, unassuming conversation that attracts hundreds of listeners. In a few days, he contributes to raising radio listening rates to numbers never dreamed of before, and he becomes a brilliant name in Arkansas. Meanwhile, Larry’s relationship with Marcia develops. She gets closer to him and learns about his history, where he lived without a father, with a cruel and neglectful mother. We see Larry at all times, he is the same Larry on his radio watch. He does not care much about stardom, and nothing has changed in his lifestyle. He practices his radio work as a personal pleasure and a way to talk to the residents of his city and nothing more. However, due to his overwhelming presence, his many talents, and people’s love for him, Larry’s stardom increases until it reaches beyond the local area, and requests begin to pour in from larger radio stations.
Separation from Self
Larry and Marcia move to Memphis in response to an offer from a television station. Larry arrives in Memphis and begins his television program. From the first episode, he imposes his distinctive personality on the screen. The camera is unable to limit his boldness and freedom of speech. We find him approaching the camera, moving it, and speaking sarcastically about the crew that directs him behind the camera. After a few days, his program reaches a larger audience, his name shines on television, and he becomes the talk of the public and the media.
Larry is interested in being spontaneous, honest, and free in front of his audience, and when he first encounters one of the necessary and inevitable forms of media (advertising), the channel signs a contract with a company stipulating that Larry advertises and markets this company in one of the segments of his program. We learn about his refusal to play this role. After pressure from the channel’s management, Larry presents the advertisement segment in the most sarcastic manner, which angers the channel’s management, who are forced to expel him. However, there is an offer coming from New York.
From New York, where the media pumps and major businessmen and politicians are, begins the series of transformations in Larry’s personality, and the extraordinary rise of his star and his fans begins. His separation from himself begins when he accepts the promotion and advertising of “Vitex” pills, which one of the largest businessmen would like to strongly present in the form of magic pills that positively affect all aspects of life.
Once Larry accepts this false advertisement, Kazan’s crazy journey begins, diving into the scenes of television and the media industry, and into the concepts of fame and stardom, and their impact on the individual himself, and on the audience behind the screens. With directing intelligence and exceptional genius, Kazan transforms the rhythm of the film to mimic the changes that occur in the character and his lifestyle. In the first quarter of the film, where fame is still local and the character is consistent with himself, we notice that the rhythm of the film is characterized by a certain calmness and notice of the aesthetic details and long, drawn-out dialogues, but after New York and after international fame everything becomes fast and turbulent. Larry is absorbed in his fame and media image, the media pumps gradually snatch him from himself in a terrifying way, turning him into another false and canned face. Larry enters a state similar to addiction, as he clings day after day to his fame and stardom, feeds on the love of the masses, and covets more and more.
In the background, there is a relationship developing between him and Marcia, becoming a relationship of mutual love, but Marcia lives a complex conflict (brilliantly embodied by actress Patricia Neal). She sees in amazement the enormous changes that have occurred in Larry, his separation from himself, and the reincarnation of another self that he was the first to reject. The “simple country boy” whom she loved became “the famous star in America,” from whom the limelight has stripped of everything that was special, unique, and human, and he became a greedy soul obsessed with himself and his image in front of the screens. And because she is his discoverer and maker, and her relationship with him is not limited to love, otherwise her withdrawal would have been easy after the qualities that she loved in him were gone. She now realizes that he is going on a destructive and dangerous path, so she struggles with the guilt she feels by standing by him and continuing her relationship with him.
On the other hand, because he is in an environment full of hypocrites, full of weak friendships based on mutual interests, in which he finds refuge in his difficult times, he realizes that he will not find anyone more honest and loving than her, and so one night he asks her to marry him.
Marriage in front of the Cameras
After his return from his travels, Marcia eagerly receives him, only to be surprised that he is getting off the plane with his wife, a show dancer a decade younger than him (played by Lee Remick in her first film). From the first scene of the couple interacting in front of the cameras, we realize the nature of this relationship and its fundamental purpose, the girl raises her dress to above the knee amidst photographers, a large media presence, a media wedding, and more privacy invasions. Kazan depicts this relationship with remarkable accuracy and intelligence, as if you are watching him mimicking some of today’s social media relationships. After Larry returns to his program (there is a crowd present in the studio), he enters with his wife in a wedding dress, in an iconic scene in which Kazan’s camera captures in overhead shots the appearance of the wedding amidst the lights and cameras and captures the audience’s interaction and their crazy screams. After the groom and bride walk in in front of the cameras, his wife takes off her dress, leaving what is underneath, a show-stopping dress, while her broadcaster husband presents her to his audience, raving about her beauty and attractiveness. A scene that has not lost its meaning over time, and is still connected to our reality today the same way it was connected to its reality at that time.
Because it is an unnatural marriage, it ends unnaturally. After Larry discovers that his wife is cheating on him with his agent, he ends the relationship with “You are fired,” as if the marriage was another media contract, ending in expulsion, not divorce.
Mania and the Tragedy of the Fall
Larry enters states of mania and madness, blatant paranoia, as he spends his days continuously running. He invents a machine that claps and laughs for him at the push of a button. He feeds on the public’s love and high viewing ratings. That simple man in Arkansas who was free in prison is now owned, while living in largest and most luxurious homes, the huge media machines succeeded in grinding him down and removing every human principle that he maintained, turning him into a counterfeit being, a commodity, a media form that the public loves.
Kazan does not stop with this star’s dealings with businessmen or huge advertising companies. Rather, he takes his film to further and bolder lengths, as Larry approaches senior politicians. In reference to the star’s influence on the public, Kazan films a long scene in which Larry instructs a political candidate on the ways he should appear in the media – to win the public’s love and thus their vote – how to walk, how to talk, what to talk about, “It’s not important that they respect you, it’s important that they love you.”
Larry’s obsession and madness increases, and he begins to constantly praise himself and attack the audience in his private conversations, “I own them, they think like me.” Larry separates into two characters, one in front of the camera and the other behind it, unlike his beginnings on his radio program, where he was one honest character on or off the air.
Marcia’s suffering and turmoil also increase in front of this “monster” that she created. She tries in various ways to free him from the enslavement of stardom, but to no avail, until on one of his episodes – which ends with a musical segment in which Larry utters a mockery of his audience in front of the camera because he knows that his voice is cut off – she is forced to turn on the sound so that his wide audience can hear the insulting words that he uses to attack them in order to end his stardom.
Indeed, in a genius scene, Larry enters the elevator and descends dozens of floors to reach the ground floor. Kazan directs the camera at the numbers in the elevator and shows quick montage shots of the turmoil of the public, the press, and the media and their blatant attack on Larry. The elevator continues to descend, and thus Larry falls quickly. This value and this status are unreal, and their fall is rapid and resounding, and it is not surprising that America’s number one star becomes, within hours, a forgotten man who is rejected by the public.
The film ends with a timeless scene in which Larry talks to himself as if he were in front of the cameras in a large hall, amidst laughter and applause from the machine he invented. Larry seems to have lost his mind after losing the love of his large audience. The last shot, without music, Marcia walks away, amid his screams. “Marcia! do not leave me!”
In Conclusion
Kazan shot his film A Face in the Crowd in an angry, indignant, bold tone, at a time when television in particular was beginning to appear and spread, and various media outlets in general (it is clear that Kazan’s boldness in depicting the mysteries of the visual world and its immorality in an angry and revolutionary manner was an inspiration for many films that appeared after, perhaps the most important of which is Network by Sidney Lumet). It depicts the journey of stardom and the behind-the-scenes media in depth, evoking the smallest and most complex details. Throughout the film, it maintains extreme realism, focusing on its characters and their struggle with themselves and what brings them down, two characteristics you always find in Kazan cinema, which always pursue a person and delve deep into his inner being, how he is affected and how he influences others.
Kazan is known for his keen interest in the actor’s performance in his films, which brings out the best in his actors’ acting energies, as Elia Kazan was one of the founders of the Actor’s Studio, which directed big names in the world of acting, such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, De Niro, Al Pacino, and others with the brightest names in the world of acting. In A Face in the Crowd, Andy Griffith’s first role, he completely takes over the screen, a possession that makes us understand his overwhelming influence on his wide audience, and accurately expresses the complex and different states that the character went through, specifically in the states of obsession and madness in the last quarter of the film.
A Face in the Crowd is an important work beyond its high artistic value. It helps us understand the impact of stardom and fame on celebrities themselves. The film also provides insight into our own reality in terms of our dealings with the media. It examines the impact of media images on us, and on our view of ourselves and those around us. Although the film focuses on the influence of television, we can apply its lessons to the impact of various social networking sites today. Time has not diminished the value and influence of this film. When you watch it today, it feels as if it was a product of the current era.
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