Martin Scorsese’s movie recommendations: “People should see ‘A Face in the Crowd’ over and over”
When Martin Scorsese tells you to watch a movie, you watch the damn movie. The director is the preeminent sage on all things cinema, having demonstrated his virtuosity behind the camera and consistently showing up to sing the praises of other filmmakers. Throughout his career, he’s incorporated many of the techniques of his favourite directors into his movies, specifically paying homage to the likes of Powell and Pressburger, Andrzej Wajda, and Federico Fellini.
Scorsese believes in cinema in its truest artistic form, not in its ability to sell merchandise or act as a vehicle for the latest advancements in CGI. Over the years, he’s been an outspoken critic of Hollywood’s obsession with corporate-driven blockbusters and expounded upon the virtues of a vast range of films. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s luminous ballet drama The Red Shoes is a favourite, as is Michelangelo Antonioni’s meditative drama L’Avventura.
In a recent interview, however, Scorsese had just one film he said that everyone should see. Speaking to The Associated Press, the Killers of the Flower Moon director singled out a 1957 political drama directed by Elia Kazan.
“People should see A Face in the Crowd over and over again,” he said. “I think that’d be important.”
Although often overlooked, A Face in the Crowd is a remarkably prescient film. It stars Andy Griffith (before his career-defining turn as a small-town sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show) as Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes, a musician and drifter who is discovered by a journalist while languishing in a jail in the American south. When she hears his music, she puts him on the radio, and he soon gains a passionate following. His musical talent, combined with his down-home charisma and bashing of out-of-touch politicians, makes him an instant cultural hero, and he soon harbours aspirations outside of music.
Behind that folksy façade, however, is Rhodes’ utter contempt for his fans and the “common” people he professes to represent. In addition to his heavy drinking, he is prone to sexual misconduct, even leaving his fiancé to marry a 17-year-old. His obsession with adoration is made painfully obvious in one scene when he stands alone in his apartment, speaking to an empty room with an applause track on the record player.
At the time the film was released in 1957, was seen as profoundly cynical. By today’s standards, however, it’s practically a fairytale. By the end, Rhodes has been exposed as a contemptible hypocrite and loses everything. The journalist who discovered him reveals that she feels guilty for her role in his ascendence, only for another character to say that while a person like Rhodes might fool people at first, people will always “get wise to him”.
From a 2024 perspective, this ending is painfully optimistic, even delusional, but Kazan’s film, as Scorsese said, is worth watching time and again. It’s a cautionary tale that might not alter the course of history but can at least serve as a reminder that characters like Rhodes are nothing new and that their power is as tenuous as their egos.
