40 Years Ago: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

As difficult as it is to believe, 2024 marks the 40^th anniversary of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the horror film that introduced the world to dream monster Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund).  

Historically-speaking, A Nightmare on Elm Street is significant not merely for commencing a franchise that came to include five direct theatrical sequels, but a two-season TV anthology, Freddy’s Nightmares (1988 – 1990), a nifty re-imagination in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), a cross-over, Freddy vs. Jason (2004) and a misguided re-boot in 2010.  

The Freddy series put New Line Studios -- “The House That Freddy Built” -- on the map, as well.

In a broader genre context, A Nightmare on Elm Street was the rubber-reality venture that ended the long reign of the naturalistic slasher films of the early 1980s; films with titles such as Happy Birthday to Me (1981) or My Bloody Valentine (1981). 

Those older films eschewed supernatural horrors, and focused on mad-dog killers (usually in masks) who killed teenagers with very sharp implements. The killers were largely silent killing machines, without much by way of personality.

The slashers’ episodic nature remained intact in A Nightmare on Elm Street’s modified “rubber reality” format, but in general, rubber reality tales (like Hellraiser [1987], for instance) were buttressed by more imaginative special effects, and supernatural, loquacious monsters.

Eventually, even the ultra-naturalistic Friday the 13^th film series moved towards more rubber-reality-type fare because of Freddy’s re-direction of the genre.

In just a few short years, then, Freddy Krueger became the king of American horror films, and a pop culture sensation. The modern, 21^st century horror film has moved back towards a more naturalistic setting and tone, in large part due to the success of the found-footage sub-genre, and so Freddy today seems like a character who perfectly captures his particular era: the 1980s.

The relative quality of A Nightmare on Elm Street’s sequels has been debated up and down, again and again, even in the Wes Craven movie Scream (1996), but the original film remains a powerhouse of terror, even thirty years later. The 1984 film has lost none of its atmosphere of mounting, pervasive dread, and Craven’s imaginative style and content continues to impress. 

The film’s artistic success is based on a few crucial factors.  

As Sharon Packer writes in Movies and the Modern Psyche (page 49), A Nightmare on Elm Street is “intriguing because of its ability to blend the supernatural with psychoanalytic subtexts.”  

In Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion and Psychology, Kelly Bulkeley argues that Craven’s effort generates it “narrative power by tapping into people’s common dream experiences, in this case, the experience of recurring nightmares.”

These observations about A Nightmare on Elm Street seem right on target, and yet for this critic, the film always resonates because it globally applies its surface vs. reality conceit.  

In other words, A Nightmare on Elm Street concerns both the appearance of reality, and the true reality that dwells or roils underneath that (false) appearance.  

Virtually every aspect of the cinematic tale can be studied utilizing this particular bailiwick. Impressively, A Nightmare on Elm Street even finds a literary precedent for this conceit, and frequently references the works of Shakespeare, mostly Hamlet, but also Julius Caesar.

In addition to this thematic virtue, A Nightmare on Elm Street remains a turning-point in horror history, I submit, because the “final girl” archetype, -- here represented by Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson -- finally blossoms to full maturity.  

Although Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode survived her experience with boogeyman Michael Myers in Halloween (1978), Nancy’s battle with Freddy in Nightmare is determinedly different.

At some point in the crisis, Nancy takes control and responsibility for her life and her struggle, and defeats Krueger on his own terms. Nancy does so using her insight, resourcefulness, and planning…not just by a lucky turn of fate.  

This fact is perfectly dramatized when one contrasts the “High School English Class” scenes featured in the Carpenter and Craven films.  The former is about fate, and the way that fate determines action and destiny.  

The latter is about a hero (Hamlet) digging for and excavating the truth against great odds and entrenched power. 

One scene is about surviving by circumstance, the other is about actively participating and re-shaping your own future.  Nancy is a hero, then, who takes responsibility for her survival in an affirming, powerful fashion.

“Nancy, you dreamed about the same creep I did…”

A high school student, Tina (Amanda Wyss) becomes obsessed with a recurring dream.  At night -- every night -- she dreams of a stalker in a fedora and red-and-green-sweater.  He is armed with a razor-tipped glove.

Tina discovers that her best friend, Nancy (Langenkamp) is experiencing the same nightmare, about the same boogeyman, and holds a sleep-over at her home when her mother goes out of town.  

Also at the sleep-over are Nancy’s boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp), and Tina’s juvenile delinquent beau, Rod Lane (Nick Corri).  When all the teens are asleep, the nightmare man strikes Tina and kills her brutally in her dream.

Rod is arrested for the murder of Tina by Nancy’s father, Detective Thompson (John Saxon), but Nancy is convinced that he is innocent, and that the dream stalker is “real,” and responsible for the crime. 

Nancy presses her alcoholic mother, Marge (Ronee Blakeley) for details.  She learns that some years earlier, the parents of Elm Street hunted and down and killed a man, Fred Krueger (Englund), who was a child murderer but escaped justice on a legal technicality.  The Thompsons and the other parents burned him alive, but kept his hat and finger knives in Nancy’s house -- in the furnace -- as a kind of trophy.

The murders on Elm Street continue, and Nancy realizes she must take affirmative steps to defeat Krueger and stop his plans to kill her.  

But should Nancy proceed as her boyfriend, Glen, suggests -- and which goes against her nature of “digging” and confronting the truth -- and turn her back on Freddy…thus robbing him of the energy she gave him?

“I’m into survival.”

In blunt terms, A Nightmare on Elm Street concerns the surface, and the underneath or “truth” that co-exists with that surface.  

Many aspects of this Craven film visit and explore this duality, or double nature.  

We detect this duality in terms of location, both with the suburban high school that seems normal, and the sinister boiler room underneath it, where Freddy rules. Many of the film's most terrifying scenes are set in dark labyrinth, or maze-like basements, a connective tissue between the surface above and the truth below.

We see the same duality in the real world, where people are presumed safe and protected by the rules of consensus reality, and the dream world, where there is mortal danger.  You die in your dream, you die in real life.

We see the duality in the Elm Street parents, who profess propriety and adherence to law and order, but who are, in fact, murderers. 

We even see it in regards to morality.  

Again, the Elm Street parents have crafted a world of apparent moral absolutism (where Christ on the cross protects teenage girls’ in their bedrooms…), but they actually practice moral relativism. For example, Lieutenant Thompson uses his own daughter, Nancy, as a pawn so as to achieve his goal of apprehending Rod Lane.  Similarly, Marge Thompson sees the murder of Freddy as the parents' "right" because the legal system failed to arrive at the conclusion they preferred.

Throughout A Nightmare on Elm Street, then, there exist two lines or tracks to keep abreast of simultaneously: reality as it appears to be true, and reality as it actually is. Craven's conceit here was extremely timely, and reflected something larger -- and disturbing -- happening in American 1980s culture.  

Specifically, America was experiencing, very much, the same duality on a national scale. The myth that was being peddled at the time by those in power (and which was preferable to hard reality…) was that it was possible to “have it all.”  

As the authors of Landslide: the Unmaking of the President (1984 – 1988) wrote of this time, the new (Reagan) administration said it was possible “to cut taxes, and increase defense spending and at the same time, fight terrorism, roll back Communism and the threat of nuclear war, all without risking American lives. Reagan seemed to be offering a miracle cure.”  (Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1988, page 11).

Again and again during this time, symbolism (or rhetoric) and reality clashed. The new Administration promised to reverse the growth of an out-of-control Federal government, but after two terms under its control, the Federal work force actually expanded by over 60,000 employees. The same administration promised tax cuts, but actually raised taxes three times: in 1983, 1984, and 1986.  

What is the price when actions don’t match words or symbolism? 

It’s fairly simple to calculate. From 1980 to 1988, America countenanced a staggering 2.7 trillion dollars in debt, roughly 200 billion dollars a year. 

Who was going to pay that debt? 

Future generations of course, and that’s precisely where the direct comparison to Freddy and his behavior comes into play.  

After all, Freddy is all about visiting the sins of the father upon the children.  He explicitly doesn’t go after the surviving parents of Elm Street (save for Marge in the finale…), but instead punishes those parents by taking their children away.  

A national debt of the egregious size we racked up in the 1980s was, similarly, a visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the children. It was the kids who would be faced with paying the piper.

Other epochs and other decades bring other bugaboos. A whole raft of horror films from the 1970s, including Dawn of the Dead (1979) seem born from Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” malaise, for example, and 1950s horror films, in general, arise from fears about the 1940s detonation of atom bombs in Japan. So partisanship has nothing to do with it. Reaganomics is simply, in some sub-textual way, the basis for the sub-surface fears expressed in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

As a protagonist, Nancy Thompson fits perfectly into this discussion of reality vs. symbolism, or surface vs. reality, if you prefer. 

Like the Prince of Denmark, she digs and digs, uncovering lies and murder, until she gets to the truth behind all the death and corruption.  

She discovers that her parents are murderers, and worse, that they are okay with the fact that they took the law into their own hands.  Their protestations of righteousness are hollow-sounding lies.  And it is here, in reckoning with those lies, that Nancy realizes no one can help her.

The police are powerless to stop Freddy, because he operates in his own reality. 

Her parents are similarly helpless, because they are either alcoholic, are unwilling to listen to their child’s fears.  

And at a dream clinic, scientists also prove unable to help Nancy survive against the looming threat to her very survival.

So Nancy learns the hard-lesson in A Nightmare on Elm Street that the older folks aren’t going to help her.  The Establishment, as it stands, is unwilling and unable to confront the truth, and solve the problem in an effective fashion.  In a sense, her parents have already sold her and her friends out.  Their illegal behavior – their solution to the problem of Freddy -- has given Krueger license to hunt and murder their children. 

Nancy’s task is to see past the rhetoric and lies, and figure out a way in which she makes it forward. This task resonates not only with what was happening to the American economy in the eighties, but in terms of the Cold War as well. Nuclear War was never more than the push of a button away in this age, and the young generation wanted no part of it, and sought solace in what older generations called "death metal" and "dead teenager movies."

Again, the parents who brought the world to the brink of war might be viewed as culpable for creating that “demon,” while the younger generation, represented by Nancy, had to carry the burden of knowing that death -- apocalypse -- could come at any moment.  Freddy -- Craven's "bad father" -- is the avatar for all these generational fears; but particularly the fear that the world is fucked up, that it isn't your fault, and that, without doubt, the world is going to come and kill you.

What remains so fascinating about A Nightmare on Elm Street is Nancy’s predicament. Her mother notes: “You face things. That’s your nature…But sometimes you’ve got to turn away too.”  

What we are left with here, then, is a reckoning with the idea that society can’t continue -- that teenagers can’t grow up safely -- in the full light of reality, because it is too unpleasant. There are some things that are so horrifying that it is necessary to turn away from them.

But does turning away from them mean burying them? Does turning away mean medicating yourself to a state of numbness?  Some amount of denial may be desirable, healthy even, but first you must know what you are denying.  Nancy must learn when to dig for truth and when to turn away from the lies and corruption she finds.  So, in some weird and very eighties way, A Nightmare on Elm Street is about growing up, and finding your own way to navigate a messed-up world.

Again, this crisis speaks of a duality, doesn’t it? Do we face our demons, or turn our backs on them?  Perhaps because the world is so complex, both realities must be given their due...

All the sub-textual currency in A Nightmare on Elm Street makes the film pulsate with ideas and cultural fears, but what is actually seen on screen is…visceral.  

The death of Tina is one of the most horrifying and remarkable death scenes ever put to film (with Glen’s a close second, perhaps).  Tina’s death is violent, irrational, and based on the idea that a reality ignored is a reality that is dangerous, or deadly. 

An unseen assailant rips the beautiful teen apart, and razor cuts “happen” to her, because her parents have not been able to help her, or acknowledge the truth about the danger she faces.  Future Elm Street films boast far more elaborate death sequences, but for my money, Tina’s remains the most effective in the entire franchise.  Her murder galvanizes the senses. It terrifies. It goes so far beyond the pale -- and beyond rationality or Physics -- that viewers realize they have crossed over into a whole new world of terror.

A Nightmare on Elm Street succeeds as rubber-reality and as horror film because it brilliantly charts the overlap between real world and dream world in ways that are shocking, and yet simultaneously familiar to us. 

We've all had that terrible dream in which we are being chased, and our feet sink into the ground, delaying and jeopardizing our escape. Craven harnesses that universal image for a chase scene here, in which a staircase turns to goo under Nancy's feet, and Freddy looms nearer.

Another universal image of terror involves Freddy -- just an unformed shadow -- in a dark alley.  He is a menacing but vague boogeyman who suddenly grows even more menacing, as his arms stretch and stretch to inhuman proportion.  There's something very basic or primeval about this vision, of arms growing longer and longer to entrap their prey.  And because Freddy is silhouetted, we can pour all of our various fears into him. He can be a bad father, a child murderer, a supernatural entity, or all of the above.

As a reflection of timely national fears and universal "nightmares," A Nightmare on Elm Street still succeeds wildly today...much more so than its unfortunate remake.  The film also represents a milestone in terms of the horror genre's portrayal of women, and is highly effective in generating its terror.  

Long story short: forty years later A Nightmare on Elm Street is still bloody good.

50 Years Ago: Earthquake (1974)

The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) hold up beautifully as examples of th disaster film all these years later. Each of those Irwin Allen-produced films concerns more than chaos and wreckage. These are films about the human spirit, and the drive that compels us to keep fighting when all hope seems lost.

The genre hit a speed bump, however, with 1974’s Earthquake.

The 50 year old film written by George Fox and Mario Puzo and from director Mark Robson simply isn’t in the same league as the efforts I note above.  Instead, Earthquake is a meandering, largely suspense-less effort that suffers from the fact that the action is too spread out, and therefore tension is sacrificed.  A ship at sea and a high-rise on fire are largely inescapable, and concern people with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  Earthquake’s central disaster -- a quake that registers 7 on the Richter Scale -- doesn’t mine any particular location for suspense, and the result is a film that often feels aimless and directionless.

It doesn’t help, either, that high-point of this film -- the earthquake – occurs after the first hour, and leaves very little of excitement left for the film’s denouement.  

The acting in the film is pretty terrible too (Ava Gardner, I’m looking at you!), and the character relationships are, at times, baffling. 

The last straw, perhaps, is the inconsistent special effects. Some moments during the quake are believably rendered, but other moments -- such as the one notorious moment involving blobs of cartoon blood in an elevator -- are downright ludicrous.

Every genre has its highs and lows for certain, and the disaster film format is no exception.  I believe was spoiled by the quality of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, watched back-to-back. Earthquake is thoroughly pedestrian.

But hey, at least Earthquake is better than The Swarm (1978), right?

“The question is: what in God’s name do we do now?”

In Los Angeles, at the Seismological Institute, a young graduate student analyzes data suggesting a tremor, and then a massive earthquake will strike the city in less than 24 hours. His superiors are reluctant to believe his dire warning, and equally reluctant to report his findings to the governor and the mayor.

When the predicted tremor occurs, however, the seismologists leap into action, and the governor mobilizes the National Guard in response. 

But no amount of preparation can adequately safe-guard Los Angeles from the earthquake that strikes next. Rating a 7 on the Richter scale, this quake brings skyscrapers to the ground, destroys free-ways, and sends house careening off the Hollywood hills. Worse, the Hollywood Reservoir Dam crumbles, and parts of the city flood.

Through it all, a determined architect, Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston) in a bad marriage with his boss’s daughter (Ava Gardner) shows determination and pluck.  

He rescues a number of people, including his boss (Lorne Greene)m at his high-rise office, and then teams up with a suspended police officer, Lou Slade (George Kennedy) to rescue others in the city, including Stewart’s mistress, Denise (Genevieve Bujold) and her young son, Cory (Tiger Williams).

While Stewart attempts to save the injured and dying, others, including a psychotic National Guardsman (Marjoe Gortner), attempt to take advantage of the disaster for their own twisted agendas.

“This used to be a hell of a town.”

In my reviews of other 1970s disaster films, I’ve concentrated on the notion that films like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno thrive on philosophical ideas about their disasters and human nature, not merely the depiction of those disasters. For example, The Poseidon Adventure is about fighting -- to the last breath -- to survive in difficult circumstances; to find the part of God that dwells inside of you, to quote Gene Hackman’s character, Reverend Scott. 

And The Towering Inferno assiduously draws a contrast between reckless, money-grubbing Big Business (represented by Richard Chamberlain and William Holden), and the selflessness of San Francisco’s municipal fire fighters, led by O’Halloran (Steve McQueen). One of these forces cares more about profit than people, and it isn’t the firefighters.

Earthquake doesn’t feature a thematic through line or depth that is comparable, alas. Early on, there is much discussion about the responsibility of the seismologists to warn someone in authority about the approaching quake.  Is it right to sound the alarm, knowing that it might start a panic to do so? Is it right to report speculation about a quake, and risk looking like a fool to the media and city politicians if no quake occurs? 

These are truly intriguing points, but after they are raised, the movie totally abandons them.  

Without a central location -- or even a galvanizing idea -- to hold the film together, Earthquake quickly proves episodic and underwhelming in terms of its narrative and the hunt for deeper meaning.  

We never find out, for instance, why Stewart and Remy hate each other to such a dramatic degree.  They are an endlessly bicker-some couple, and it’s difficult to have much sympathy for either one of them.  Stewart is having affair, for instance, and Remy fakes suicide attempts on a regular basis.  It’s not a terrible surprise when a Biblical flood washes them away in the film’s final moments, given their “sins.”  But the scene isn’t as powerful as it might be because the audience doesn’t really care for the characters.  

Other moments in Earthquake are downright bad. For instance, Walter Matthau hams it up as a silly barfly wearing a pimp hat in several unnecessary scenes. Why is his character even in the film? He’s a cartoon character who proves agonizingly unfunny, and -- at the same time -- a walking, talking stereotype.

Similarly, what are viewers to make of Marjoe Gortner’s character, a muscle-bound grocery store worker in the National Guard who chooses the event of an earthquake to address his grievances with a group of bullies, and then attempts to rape Victoria Principal’s character, Rosa?

Is he a psychopath? Nuts? A self-hating body-builder?

More than likely, Gortner's character is present to provide some third act tension. The film badly requires that tension because the earthquake has already struck, and the flood is saved for the denouement. Gortner's "Joad" may also represent a Vietnam Age distaste for soldiers, which was seen in a lot of 1970s movies and TV programs, and today transmits as pretty superficial.

The most ridiculous moment in Earthquake, however, arrives when a group of survivors board an elevator during the quake. The car shakes loose of its cable and careens several dozen floors to the ground. There’s a great shot of the screaming people in the compartment, but then several big ,animated bubbles of bright red blood are superimposed over the footage, and launched at the screen.

What the hell?

For a film struggling so mightily to seem believable, and to meaningfully compete with The Towering Inferno, this a reality-shattering moment of the highest order.

Earthquake gets so little right, actually. Ava Gardner is terribly miscast as Lorne Greene’s daughter and Charlton Heston’s wife. I believe she was only three years younger than Greene at this point, and she and Heston share what can only politely be termed “anti-chemistry.”  

Worse, some moments -- like the rescue of Genevieve Bujold’s son from an electrical cable -- make the earthquake seem small and not, literally earth shattering.

But most disappointing of all is the focus on soap opera plotting. Stewart’s promotion, Slade’s disenchantment with the police force, Mile Quade’s motorcycle stunt, Denise’s acting job and other issues are all brought up, but ultimately left unresolved in the face of utter destruction.  

I suppose the film could have considered the way man proposes, and God disposes, but even that idea is not enunciated here.

All that established, I should also write that Earthquake features some beautiful matte-painting of the destroyed Los Angeles landscape.

I think that just about the only way this film could truly be described as gripping is if audiences saw it in theaters in Sensurround. I can see how that rumbling effect would add a whole new dimension to the film’s narrative Without the support of this gimmick, Earthquake is rendered, sadly, a completely two-dimensional affair.

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50 Years Ago: The Little Prince (1974)

This 1974 musical fantasy film from Stanley Donen, now a half-century old, is an adaptation of one of the most popular children’s novels in the world, Antoine de Saint-Expury’s whimsical The Little Prince.  

Although a child's tale on the surface, The Little Prince is famous for its social critique of a failing world. Specifically, the author based the story on his own plane crash in the Saraha during World War II, and created characters based not merely upon his life story, but upon the threat of Nazism spreading across the civilized world. In particular, the Little Prince in the story seeks to keep a kind of perfidious weed from overrunning his small world, for which he requires the help of a sheep.  It’s not difficult to interpret that rapidly-growing and malevolent weed as the fascist tide spreading in Europe, which threatened France, England and eventually the world. 

Other characters in the book (and film) similarly represent mankind’s failings in the face of peril: a king who has no subjects but insists on “borders,” a businessman who thinks he owns the stars, and a historian who believes he is the best, in fact, in history.

The story commences when a fighter pilot (Richard Kiley) in World War II crashes in the Sahara desert and unexpectedly finds that he has a companion, a small boy (Steven) Warner) who claims to be from another world, the asteroid B-612. 

This child the Little Prince, recounts his unusual journeys to other worlds, as well as his visit to Earth thus far. The pilot also learns that Snake (Bob Fosse) -- a devil-like figure -- possesses an interest in the boy, and has a way to send him home to his world: murder.

The 1974 musical is a sweet and emotional rendering of the tale, and like its literary counterpart is a highly symbolic film. Everywhere the Little Prince travels, he learns a lesson about life on Earth, and about mankind itself.  

Separated from the original 1940s context, however, the film seems more critical of adults in general (as well as adult viewpoints) than a commentary on any historical ideology or movement.  The film revives the book’s line that “it’s only with the heart that one can see clearly” and that is the central metaphor. 

Many adults in the film like the King, the historian, the soldier or the businessman are self-justifying and hypocritical in nature.  They refer to the Prince as a child, thereby diminishing him and his justifiable concerns about his planet, but they are not able to see beyond their own narrow self-interest, their own pathology.  Meanwhile, the Prince -- a child -- views all things with refreshing honesty,  purity and incorruptibility.

On Earth, however, the Prince makes a friend in the pilot and in a fox.  Unfortunately he also meets the worst personality of all, a snake or devil who crawls in the grass and wants only to kill him. Not understanding human life or death (as indeed, a child does not understand the permanence of death…), the Little Prince sees the snake’s offer of a “bite” as a way home to his beautiful rose, the love he left behind on his asteroid (and widely believed to be representative of the author’s mercurial wife).

 

A musical is often a tough sell for the committed science fiction fan, so The Little Prince isn’t going to be to every audience’s taste even though it’s a beautiful, emotional film, especially for parents of young ones.

The musical numbers are hit and miss at first, but soon become quite enjoyable, and even rousing.  Bob Fosse’s moment as the Devil/Snake is unforgettable, and seems the template for all of Michael Jackson’s dance moves in the early 1980s.  Gene Wilder’s number as the fox is also a high-point in the film.

Bereft of its original, more meaningful context regarding Nazism and World War II, The Little Prince remains an unforgettable and emotional story of children and adults, and on that basis is worthwhile.

"We Get Wise to Him. That's Our Strength: " A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Based on the 1955 short story by Bud Schulberg, “Your Arkansas Traveler,” Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) is the cautionary tale of an American demogogue’s rise to -- and fall from -- power. 

A demagogue might be defined, broadly, as a “political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than rational argument.”

The film focuses on "Lonesome" Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a small-time crook and fraud plucked from obscurity in a county jail in Arkansas by a radio programmer, Marcia Jeffries (Patricia O’Neal). She is seeking “local color” for her radio show, and Rhodes can spin a story and sing a folk tune like no other.  

Marcia's search for an audience -- ratings, in modern lingo -- gives the charismatic but malicious Rhodes both exposure and a public platform. Before long, he’s moved to a bigger radio market. Then he transitions to national TV, talking politics and “telling it like it is” to a receptive, low-information audience that hangs on his every word and believes his every false piety.

Rhode’s rise to fame and fortune is aided and abetted by his sponsors and his network. They see his viewership swell to 65 million people. That's a lot of consumers who will buy products from sponsors.

A drunk, misogynist, mean-spirited narcissist, Rhodes appreciatively soaks up all the adoration and power, coming eventually to believe his own press. 

Eventually, he grows so powerful that he advises a presidential campaign in the art of slogans and sound-byes. He also begins hosting a political program, shrouding extreme right wing isolationist views under the soothing umbrella of Southern-fried common sense.  

Eventually, Marcia realizes the key to Rhodes’ downfall involves revealing his true colors to the masses that worship his “home-spun” wisdom and apparent “truth telling.”

As that synopsis makes clear, A Face in the Crowd is a terrifying story of what can happen to America once “politics has entered a new stage: the TV stage.” 

One man’s hateful, ignorant words -- not to mention resentment and anti-intellectualism -- finds purchase in the psyches of millions of like-minded people. Kazan’s camera cuts, at one point to a veritable forest of TV antennae jutting upwards from the rooftops of an urban jungle in order to make his point. These receiving devices look like metal weeds, growing and stretching upwards to the sky. 

The point, of course, is how the mass media can instantly amplify -- for its own enrichment -- one voice to a volume previously unimaginable in human history. Even Rhodes himself -- in a rare moment of apparent self-awareness – recognizes the danger inherent in this technology and its ability to broadcast an entertaining (albeit dangerous) voice to million.  

“Power,” he says, “it’s dangerous. You gotta be a saint.”

But as the film makes plain, Rhodes is no saint. 

His father was a con-man who abandoned the family, and one feels that this is the galvanizing influence in Rhodes’ life. He has never been able to get past his father’s actions, or feel truly confident in himself. Accordingly, he hates authority in all its forms. He hates his father, who abandoned him. He hates the law, which punishes him for infractions. He hates establishment figures, who possess the power he covets. 

Rhodes also hates those who are smarter than he is, like TV writer Mel Miller (Walter Mattthau). Miller represents the education and knowledge that could expose Rhodes as the ignorant lout he is. 

One of the most intriguing aspects of the film involves Miller’s impotence in the face of Rhodes’ continuing disdain and hatred for him. We are led to the conclusion that is easier for a demagogue to to hate and attack than it is for a rational person to respond meaningfully to that demagogue. 

That’s undoubtedly because demogogue’s rely on powerful emotions (anger, rage, resentment) and mob-like followers who repeat mindlessly their every word and slogan. Educated intelligent people are like deer in a headlight by comparison, making logical cases and appealing to cerebral arguments.  

Miller simply can’t conceive of the fact that a nativist, bigoted simpleton could have a better innate understanding of human nature and human foibles than he does. But Miller knows what makes his people tick.

Importantly, Miller fails to fully understand his role in Rhodes’ rise. Like Marcia, he is culpable for elevating a demagogue to the status of national treasure. Rhodes is a distraction, a joke, a fad when it is good for Miller’s wallet or career.  

Only later is the coarseness of the superstar a danger to freedom itself.

What’s amazing about Rhodes, the film subtly observes, is the yawning chasm of cognitive dissonance between his public “persona” and his real personality. 

Rhodes lives in a luxurious penthouse apartment, surrounds himself with wealth and women, and covets his TV ratings. In short, he is a coddled, entitled rich man.  But his public shtick -- his fake, media-driven image -- is as “The voice of grass roots wisdom.” 

On stage, he voices syrupy Christian platitudes like “the family that prays together, stays together,” from his humble “cracker-barrel” sound stage. In real life, he is a philanderer who marries a 17 year old girl and then cheats on her.

In real life, he is also being supported by a political establishment that wants his audience’s votes. 

So Rhodes is a text-book fraud. 

He pretends to be a common-sense, salt-of-the-earth, plain talker when in fact he is a messenger boy for the wealthy elite. Rhodes claims he believes in the common man, but he hates and derides the common man.  

His ambitions are bottomless.  “The whole country is just like my flock of sheep,” he enthuses at one point. 

Delightfully, A Face in the Crowd provides a prescription for the destruction of Rhodes and demogogues just like him. 

Realizing she has created a monster, Marcia turns up the studio sound during a live broadcast, and she lets Rhodes hang himself on-air. Believing the sound is off, Rhodes expresses his true feelings for his audience. “I can make ‘em eat dog food like it is steak!” He reports.  

He is so confident in the fact that his followers will mindlessly follow wherever he leads that he actually says he could “murder” people, and they’d still be on his side.

But that’s not the case. He has overestimated his appeal.

The audience at home finally realizes that Larry is not one of them at all. He is an impostor, and just as much a tool of the hated “elite” as any conventional politician or leader. He has not “told them like it is,” at all. 

He has, contrarily, pandered to them in the worst ways possible, and they have taken his words as the God’s honest truth. He has not only played them and abused them at every turn...he has gotten rich doing so.

Kazan finds a clever visual to express Rhodes’ sudden and dramatic fall from grace. We see the elevator lights going down, quickly, in his apartment building, floor to floor. He starts at the penthouse, and drops to ground level, before our eyes, in seconds. The fall is more than symbolic. It is a meteoric crash he experiences, one even faster than his surprising, relentless rise.

A Face in the Crowd is a terrifying drama in part because of its plausibility. The mass media often gives irresponsible voices of hate, bigotry, and false piety a platform and open mic to influence the nation. 

The film notes the media’s inherent culpability for creating such a demagogue, and rightly so. If you willingly invite the devil to dance with you, you can’t complain, later, when you don’t like how he treats his dance partner. 

The film also thrives because of Griffith’s unforgettable performance. He portrays a monster of such high energy and narcissistic pride. Rhodes is a monster of considerable charisma and, hauntingly, occasional moments of insight. But he has no loyalty or feelings of responsibility to anyone or anything beyond his own self-glorification.  The thought have him possessing real power is terrifying.

A Face in the Crowd is a sobering reminder of how a dangerous, narcissistic demagogue can use and exploit the media (in a symbiotic relationship…) to change the face and values of a whole nation. 

But the film also reminds us how to stop such monsters.  

Journalists, concerned citizens, politicians, and voters all possess a responsibility to see that his “personality finally comes through,” preferably on the very channel that created him.  

“When we get wise to him, that’s our strength,” the film knowingly concludes.

The question that makes A Face in the Crowd such an intense, anxiety-provoking experience is one for the ages. 

What happens if we get wise to the demagogue too late?

To answer that interrogative, one need only look at some of the worst historical tragedies of the 20^th century, and the 21st century.

Let's not repeat those mistakes today.