A Face in the Crowd may have been a flop on its initial release in 1957, but the film, given a new 4K restoration by the Criterion Collection, has long since been recognized as one of the great films of its era.

Released the same year as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Witness for the Prosecution, 12 Angry Men, Paths of Glory, and Sweet Smell of Success, Elia Kazan’s film about a TV blowhard who convinces the sitting U.S. president to create a cabinet position for him as national morale booster, has never seemed more real than it is now, sixty-two years later.

The film marked the film debuts of Andy Griffith, Anthony Franciosa, and Lee Remick and was a milestone in their careers for both Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau.

Griffith had been a stand-up comic with several successful long-playing albums when he was chosen to play the lead in the 1955 Broadway comedy No Time for Sergeants, which led to his casting as Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd.

Rhodes was sleeping off an overnight drunk in the local jail when he was found by radio promotor Marcia Jeffries (Neal) for her program “A Face in the Crowd.” She’s the one who gives him the name “Lonesome” on the local radio station which leads to national prominence on a Memphis station and eventually TV stardom, during the course of which he morphs into the kind of small-minded, isolationist supporter of the kind of demagoguery he once lampooned. Along the way he ditches first wife Kay Medford, intending to marry Neal but instead eloping with a 17-year-old baton twirler (Remick) he met at a contest in which he was the judge. Franciosa plays Griffith’s self-serving talent agent and Matthau a cynical writer carrying a torch for Neal who is either unwilling or unable to cut Griffith loose until the film’s startling denouement.

Griffith’s character is ominously predictive of a current former TV star with political ambitions who not only wanted recognition from the U.S. president but wanted to become president, and against all odds, shockingly did.

By this time in his career, Kazan had already directed the original Broadway productions of All My Sons, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Tea and Sympathy, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the film versions of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Gentleman’s Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden among others. The screenplay for A Face in the Crowd was written by Budd Schulberg, who like Kazan, had won an Oscar for On the Waterfront. These were two powerhouses still at the top of their game.

Griffith would go on to star in the successful film version of No Time for Sergeants, return to Broadway in the James Stewart role in the musical version of Destry Rides Again, and become a TV star in his own right with the long-running beloved 1960s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show.

Neal, Matthau, Franciosa, and Remick would all receive their first Oscar nominations within nine years of making A Face in the Crowd. Franciosa was nominated for another 1957 film, A Hatful of Rain, in which he recreated his Broadway role. Remick would be nominated for 1962’s Days of Wine and Roses. Neal would be nominated and win for 1963’s Hud. Matthau would be nominated and win for 1966’s The Fortune Cookie.

Shout Select has released Jim Sheridan’s 1997 film The Boxer on Blu-ray.

The third Sheridan film to star Daniel Day-Lewis, following My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, The Boxer, like In the Name of the Father, is about the Irish “troubles.”

Day-Lewis plays a former IRA member jailed at 18 and released at 32, who returns to his Belfast home where he just wants to teach boxing to the neighborhood kids including the son of his next door neighbor, his childhood sweetheart, a smoldering Emily Watson, the daughter of an IRA leader (Brian Cox) who married Day-Lewis’ former best friend, now a convicted criminal. His chance at peace and love is jeopardized by IRA hothead Gerard McSorley and his cronies.

Though not as successful as either of his two previous Day-Lewis films, or his Oscar-befriended 2003 film In America, The Boxer was nominated for three Golden Globes – Picture, Director, and Actor (Day-Lewis).

The Blu-ray includes vintage interviews with Sheridan, Day-Lewis, and others as well as an alternate ending that some may prefer to the actual one.

Warner Archive has released an upgraded version of Summer Stock on Blu-ray.

Originally intended to reunite Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in a replay of their “let’s put on a show” musicals, by the time the film was ready to go, Rooney had fallen out of favor and Garland, already fired from The Barkleys of Broadway and Annie Get Your Gun, was on thin ice. Gene Kelly, then at a career peak with An American in Paris already on his agenda, agreed to play the male lead thanks to his affection for his For Me and My Gal and The Pirate co-star.

The story isn’t much, but the musical numbers are put over with pizzazz by the stars and their strong supporting cast which includes Gloria DeHaven, Phil Silvers, Eddie Bracken, and Marjorie Main. Garland’s weight fluctuations are obvious throughout, and if you look carefully you can spot the scenes she didn’t complete, most notably the barn dance number where Kelly and Silvers sing without her.

The film’s best song is, of course, “Get Happy,” filmed three months after the completion of the rest of the film with a svelte Garland knocking it out of the park in the last scene she ever filmed for MGM.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of The Heiress and A Delicate Balance.