On Screen
MURRAY, WILLIAM
By William Murray Kazan's Face In the Crowd' The best thing that can be said about the movies of Elia Kazan is that they are never dull; the worst that can be said of them is that they are hardly...
...I wish Kazan and Schulberg were content to rest on that, but they aren't...
...I think this has already come about to some extent, but 1 have a feeling it will be a long time before Hollvwood is ready for unadulterated Shaw and Tolstoy or even Hemingway...
...This is undoubtedly true and is the reason Kazan's direction is always most effective when applied to the plays of Tennessee Williams, a writer whose vision is limited but deep and whose plays are quite often subject to several interpretations...
...At the risk of plunging us all into fruitless metaphysical speculation...
...2.95), Kazan sees a new day dawning in Hollywood and predicts that the pressure of television will force the movie industry to produce fewer and better films in which the writer will finally achieve the status he deserves...
...who makes all the compromises but is nevertheless occasionally able to rise above them...
...In his introduction to the published version of the play (Random House...
...To make his point, Schulberg has written a screen play about an Arkansas hillbilly, powerfully played by Andy Griffith, who becomes a wildly popular TV personality with a huge audience which he begins to maneuver in order to achieve despicable financial and political ends...
...As a work of art, then, A Face in the Crowd is superficial, avoids few of the more obvious cliches (the ad exec who constantly swallows pills, the intellectual who wears horn-rims), and suffers from a wildly improbable, melodramatic ending grafted on to conform to the Production Code...
...I'd better just explain this phenomenon of the incorruptible man by saving quite simply that there are some people who are artists in spite of themselves, people who can devote the bulk of their lives to producing potboilers and still astound us with an occasional work of art...
...howl, scream and roar, bill rarely just talk to each other...
...Schulberg is the sort of writer who likes to tackle very specific topics—crime on the waterfront, the corruption of professional boxing, the way to get ahead in the movie industry—and his approach to them is methodically journalistic...
...The central idea here is the dangerous power of television to hoodwink the public...
...They want us to believe that it is also "a unified work worthy of a mature art form," which immediately complicates a critic's task by forcing him to adopt a quite different standard of judgment...
...In other words, I believe Kazan to be abundantly talented, but he does not seem to me to possess the soul of the artist...
...He is the master of the Freudian symbol, the meaningful pause, the angled close-up suggesting seething inner turmoil, the long, long shot in depth, always framed to heighten the dramatic effect of endless distance...
...Social awareness and the proper liberal political orientation, however admirable, hardly compensate for the abandonment of the uncompromising individual vision...
...On artistic grounds, which is where both Kazan and Schulberg like to take their stand, these compromises are inexcusable...
...Kazan can infuse meaning into scenes that a less talented director might easily throw away, and his potent touch can be invaluable...
...This is not to say that his work is without value (he is more of an artist, for example, than Mervyn Le Roy), but it never strays from within the limitations of a commercial framework...
...Till that day comes, then' i-no use talking about the movie industry as a mature art form...
...the worst that can be said of them is that they are hardly ever uncompromisingly honest...
...Huston, for instance, has made some really dreadful movies, but he has also turned out at least two...
...In his collaborations with Budd Schulberg, however, Kazan is less successful...
...All of which finally brings me around to A Face in the Crowd, the latest Schulberg-Kazan collaboration...
...With an introspective writer like Williams, Kazan can work miracles...
...Above all...
...In the background of every Kazan movie you can clearly hear the soft, sweet tinkle of the cash register...
...The Treasure of the Sierra Mad re and The Asphalt Jungle, that are infinitely superior to any of Kazan's...
...Much depends on the writer, of course, and Kazan himself says that "there can't be a fine picture without a fine script...
...Parenthetically, I'd like to point out that there is a kind of man, a John Huston or a Ring Lardner...
...he is the master of sound—his people whisper, mumble, bark...
...In his work, truth is too often sacrificed to sociological propaganda and the restrictive demands of a mass art form...
...Unfortunately, his ideas are never astounding for their originality or depth, and in his screen plays what he does have to say is inevitably sacrificed to the most serious impositions of the commercial screen: oversimplification in the form of pat social judgments and the necessity of an upbeat ending in which virtue triumphs...
...I found it almost consistently fascinating, occasionally very funny, and in every way a superior entertainment...
...It is, I think, the sign of genius as distinguished from mere talent...
Vol. 40 • June 1957 • No. 26
