A Face in the Crowd

A Face in the Crowd is a 1957 film directed by Elia Kazan and starring Andy Griffith (in his film debut), Patricia Neal, and Walter Matthau. Also in this are Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick, Rip Torn, and various popular public figures in cameos as themselves. I post it today in memory of Andy Griffith, who died on this date in 2012 of a heart attack at the age of 86. This movie not currently avaiable for free viewing, but I have the DVD.

trailer:

It is remarkable in the parallels between the power-hungry main character and Trump, despite the differences in their background. It's stunning how Trump has maintained his hold on the GOP and hapless citizens even after all this time.

The Memphis Flyer says,

At the movies, there have been numerous cautionary tales of demagoguery, such as All The King’s Men, Bullworth, and Network. The granddaddy of them all is Eliza Kazan’s 1957 film A Face In The Crowd. ... it tells a distinctly American story that will seem all too familiar today.

It’s hard for audiences familiar with his wholesome sitcom image and second career as crusading lawyer Matlock to image Griffith as “edgy” and “dangerous,” but he drips with Trumpian malevolence...

A Face In The Crowd Predicted The Trump Era — in 1957

CNN has this:

Donald Trump certainly isn’t the first media personality to have political ambitions – lest we forget, Ronald Reagan was initially a film star. But thanks to his bombast and apparent megalomania, Trump is certainly the first such personality to eerily echo Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, the character played by Andy Griffith in the 1957 film “A Face in the Crowd.” Watch it and you’ll be amazed.

Director Elia Kazan’s picture is one of the first to trace the relationship between TV stardom and politics.

“A Face in the Crowd” seems to be saying that the American public has the sense to turn away from a charlatan when they see one.

But so far, Donald Trump’s success clashes with the truth of that fictional story. And that’s a very scary thought.

Deadline writes,

the 1957 classic A Face In The Crowd, criminally under-appreciated at the time of its release, basically presaged the Donald Trump presidential campaign.

All are well worth discovering now as movies that had their finger on the pulse of the bizarre future we are now inhabiting. Sometimes it takes a trip to the past to figure out just how far we haven’t come.

The Wrap opens with this:

It was supposed to be a cautionary tale, but as usual, we didn’t listen. All the way back in 1957, when TV was black-and-white and served up in an unwieldy box, writer Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan (fresh off their collaboration for “On the Waterfront”) tried to warn us about the power of the small screen to create personalities who would lead us to places we didn’t want to go.

And now we have President-elect Donald Trump.

The AV Club says,

There will be no comeuppance, no undoing of Donald Trump—and certainly no moment when some clever writer gets to walk up and triumphantly lay out the path of his future of failure for him. Rather than turn away from the charlatan who openly played them like high-strung, xenophobic fiddles, the American public has actually put him in the White House, where no matter how disastrous he may be, he will always be comforted in knowing that he won—again. Trump knew exactly how to manipulate the biggest deal he could possibly land, bartering with the cheapest fears and emptiest promises, and whether he flourishes or bankrupts us all like one of his casinos, he will never again need to worry about chasing power. He now has all the power he could ever want.
...
In the aftershock of a Trump victory, how fitting it is that a movie once dismissed for being too outlandishly cynical, too overblown in its pessimism, now looks like quaintly guileless fantasy.