NETWORK (1976)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: William Holden / Faye Dunaway / Peter Finch

Plot

When an aging TV News anchor has a nervous breakdown, the station gives him his own show, exploiting his bizarre behavior and illness as entertainment for the masses.

What I Liked

“Less than three percent of you read books… less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers… the only truth you know is what you get over this tube.  Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube!  This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation.  This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime minsters,” says Howard Beale, the so-called “mad prophet of the airwaves” in “Network.”  The frightening thing is, he makes a lot of sense and those characters in the film who are considered sane and successful are in fact immoral, illogical, and vicious.  It’s all part of the film’s none too subtle portrait of a world turned upside down by the triumphs of entertainment over fact, image over substance, and money over compassion.

Just as was the case with “Dog Day Afternoon,” a film he made a year prior, director Sidney Lumet again presents us with a film where the lines between the media, the public, entertainment, and reality are not just blurred but completely dissolved.  There was no way that the filmmakers could have known completely about the coming of trash talk television, so-called reality TV, and the hijacking of legitimate news for sensational scandal that now permeate American popular culture in the twenty-first century, and yet “Network” seems to outright predict all of these.

The movie strikes an effective balance between personal drama and satire.  However, the film is never funny.  The absurdities and grotesqueries no longer seem far-fetched, but familiar.  Viewed with hindsight, “Network” feels disturbingly like a warning that should have been heeded and was not.

What I Didn’t Like

When I wrote about the aspects of Lumet’s “Dog Day Afternoon” that I found less than enjoyable, I said, “Part of [the film’s] immediacy involved incessant shouting and screaming, which can certainly wear on the nerves.  But it’s all part of the intended atmosphere.  There’s not much to complain about here for those looking for this type of movie.  Just keep in mind the film, like it’s subject, is not a pleasant experience.”  The same things, word for word, could be said of “Network,” which of course lends further credence to the feeling that all the noise and chaos is part of the filmmakers’ intentions.

Most Memorable Scene

Any of the scenes where the disturbed Howard Beale (in an Oscar winning performance by Peter Finch) gives one of his daily televised sermons against the death of democracy in America are enthralling.  This is of course where the iconic line, “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” originated.  For me, the one I quoted above was the most poignant, as the biting dialogue, devastating performance, and attention-grabbing production all come together in a tour-de-force scene.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5