Synopsis
"
Budd Schulberg and
Kazan reunited to adapt Schulberg's own cautionary tale about the manipulative and treacherous potential of television and advertising as political tools. Misunderstood at the time, and badly wounded at the box office,
A Face in the Crowd seems uncannily prescient in its depiction of right-wing extremism cloaking itself as all-American cracker-barrel folksiness.
Kazan's successful and highly unconventional casting of untested comedians and character actors reached its apogee in his ingenious selection of stand-up comic
Andy Griffith, in his first feature film, as Lonesome Rhodes, the hayseed populist transformed into an ultimately uncontrollable televisual sensation." – Harvard Film Archive
