(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 10 December 2025 17:45, UK
It doesn’t matter how good a movie is for almost all of its running time; a bad ending can ruin the experience in the space of a single scene. As far as big-screen finales go, Billy Bob Thornton knows which film gets his vote for having the greatest onscreen swansong of all time.
Whether it’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Some Like It Hot, The Graduate, Casablanca, The Godfather, The Searchers, or Citizen Kane, it’s not a coincidence that many of the finest features in cinema history also boast some of the medium’s most unforgettable final sequences, but it’s not an exact science.
Bad films can have great endings, just like great ones can have bad endings. It all rests in the hands of the filmmaker, and sticking the landing is one of the hardest parts of the job. The last scene is the first one on everybody’s mind when they leave the cinema, and if people are going to be talking out, it’s best to make sure they talk about it for the right reasons.
It’s not just the last few minutes that swayed Thornton’s decision, though, but the picture as a whole. A favourite among cinephiles, auteurs, and A-listers for decades, Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd comes highly recommended by everyone from Ron Howard and Spike Lee to Thornton and Martin Scorsese, who called it the one movie any discerning viewer needs to see “over and over again.”
Patricia Neal and Andy Griffith lead the cast as an eager radio producer and an unlikely airwaves sensation, with the latter’s Larry Rhodes becoming so popular that he emigrates to television. With his face beamed into homes around the nation, he becomes so influential that he becomes an integral figure in an upcoming presidential election, before it all starts going to his head.
It shouldn’t need to be explained how a premise that finds a loud-mouthed TV personality influencing the highest office in America has ensured that A Face in the Crowd remains as prescient now as it was almost 70 years ago, which is just one of the reasons why Thornton remains so enamoured.
“It’s probably as relevant today as it was at the time, maybe more so, about how anybody who’s got an opinion can become a big deal, and how dangerous that can be to them and the public,” he said to Rotten Tomatoes.
Adding, “Made by a great filmmaker, Kazan, Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal were terrific in it.”
In the final moments, Rhodes howls for Neal’s Marcia Jeffries to come back to him, but she’s having none of it. It struck Thornton the first time he saw it, and his opinion hasn’t wavered since: “That last scene when he’s standing on the balcony with his applause machine yelling Patricia Neal’s name, oh man. It’s a very hard-hitting movie; I never got over it.”
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