The
World’s Greatest Sinner
Hitler, of
course. Das Volk is translated as “regardless
of race, creed or color”.
From the
essential source in Kazan’s A Face in the
Crowd, this purified, cleansed, rigorous model of analysis looking ahead to
Huston’s Wise Blood, Haggard’s The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, Tim
Robbins’ Bob Roberts and Warren
Beatty’s Bulworth.
The text is “ye shall
be as gods”, one step beyond Rossen’s All the King’s Men.
One of the
several beauties is a sure foundation on the insurance man in Lubitsch’s That Uncertain Feeling as compared with “The
Eternal Man’s Party” announced on a bag of fertilizer.
The director as
star, Paul Frees, Frank Zappa, Anthony M. Lanza, Ray Dennis Steckler, Edgar G.
Ulmer, Gustav Holst.
The crowd goes
wild as he shakes and shimmies on the bandstand, first name God, politics is
even headier stuff, he runs for president.
“They’re putting you
in the same class with Father Divine and Sweet Daddy Grace, Mr. Hilliard, would
you comment on this?”
“Sorry,
gentlemen, that concludes this press conference.”
His personality,
as Moe would say, is just under his lip.
|
Rotten
to the core, |
The
TV Guide review is a treasure, “dopey,
poorly acted, scripted with a dull pencil, and outdated,” etc.
“Audaciously
subversive and bone-deep weird” (Andy Markowitz, Baltimore City Paper).
Übermensch is “super human being”. The party badge is a capital
F for Follower. If you prick the Body of Christ, is there no Blood? “Nothing
but a piece of bread! Jesus Christ, what a joke!”
Kubrick
remembers the line of retribution in 2001:
A Space Odyssey.