About a year ago, I was sitting with some actors friends (including my husband) in a NY diner and the movie came up in conversation. My husband disagreed with his friends that Griffith was brilliant; he thought he was so in-your-face that it was off putting. That’s the way I always felt about it. Andy was a wonderful actor/performer so I’m sure it might have been the direction. He’s so much more subtle in his tv show.
This is my least favorite of Budd’s movies. I much prefer On the Waterfront and The Harder They Fall. Fantastic novelist as well!
Yes, “On the Waterfront” and “The Harder They Fall” are VASTLY better movies. Stronger in every department. It always struck me as odd how about fifteen or twenty years ago that “Face” seemed to be suddenly re-discovered by the intelligensia, and became the recipient of endless raves and quotes. And Griffith’s Rhodes persona was so overdone, nobody in the 1950s would have fallen for it. And the rural public was never as two-diminsionally naive as the filmmakers love to present. Rhodes needed more subtelty, more of an easy-going Arthur Godfrey quality (and wasn’t Godfrey even partly an inspiration for the character?). THEN, it might have worked, been more believable.
Great flicks. I never appreciated Marlon Brando until later in life. I watched Julius Ceasar (1953) recently, and Brando delivered a masterly (masterful) performance as Mark Antony.