Network (1976)
Drama
Newscaster Howard Beale has a message for those who package reports of cute puppies, movie premieres and fender benders as hard news: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
Sidney Lumet directs Paddy Chayefsky’s satire (an Academy Award winning screenplay) about the things people do for love…and ratings. Three performers won Oscars. Best Actress Faye Dunaway is the TV exec guarding ratings like a tigress protecting cubs.
Best Actor Peter Finch is Beale, whose airwave rants become a phenomenon. And William Holden, Robert Duvall and Best Supporting Actress Beatrice Straight add to the fierce vitality. Network later grabbed another lofty rating as an American Film Institute
Top-100 American Films selection.
Storyline: In the 1970s, terrorist violence is the stuff of networks' nightly news programming and the corporate structure of the UBS Television Network is changing. Meanwhile, Howard Beale, the aging UBS news anchor, has lost
his once strong ratings share and so the network fires him. Beale reacts in an unexpected way. We then see how this affects the fortunes of Beale, his coworkers (Max Schumacher and Diana Christensen), and the network. Written by Bruce Janson
User Comment: *** This review may contain spoilers *** dataconflossmoor from United States, 28 April 2005 • Groundbreaking is the term for this movie...It is considered one of the hundred best movies
ever made and for very good reason...Director Sidney Lummet has a reputation for the director of the non-conventional!!...A cogency for making the absolute truth a guileless villain, a rude awakening for television viewers, and a stubborn scripture for
facts is what purports a film like Network as a masterpiece for the prolific and intellectual!! You could not ask for better acting!! The acting in this movie is second to none!! Robert Duvall, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Ned Beatty and a
whole list of others...Perhaps the best acting in any film made whatsoever!! It starts with Howard Beale (Peter Finch) a victim of his own human pitfalls...Ossified and dejected from his declining years going from bad to worse, he becomes isolated,
desultory ,morbid and morose and feels his life has no meaning, he threatens suicide on live television and is discarded as being a wacko!!...At first!!..but guess what!! he's a hit!!...So the ratings crazed cutthroats make him an instant success by
labeling him "The Angry Prophet Denouncing the Hypocracies of Our Time"...As long as we've gone this far, let's break all of the rules...Bring on the terrorists, the soothsayers, the insurectionaries, the financial gurus, the faith healers, and the para
military radicals, to reduce the severity of hard bitten news to a side show of carnival freaks!!! William Holden plays the old school business man with "primal doubts" about his life in general..."male menopause" with "defineable features" He is happily
married yet after being bombarded from all sides in the autumn of his years, he is frightened that the new generation is impervious to basic tenets of human morality such as ethics and compassion...The woman with whom he gets involved, is callous not
because she is vindictive, but because she is emotionless!! This woman (Faye Dunaway) is the "Television Incarnate" Ice Queen who reduces time and space to "split seconds and instant replays" the daily business of life is a "corrupt comedy" and the only
redeeming quality to modern marvels and a "radiant eruption of Democracy" is that it gets a 32 share!!...This acting performance is perhaps the best acting performance I have ever seen...The type of person Dianna Christensen was supposed to be was played
out perfectly...The delivery of the elaborated monologues and diatribes were absolutely remarkable....She was ideologically explosive yet person-ably obtuse. You knew why she wasn't the drinking type...she was too emotionally detached...In the thick of
women's liberation, whereby a woman wanted to be just like a man, this movie portrayed how being just like a man had it's drawbacks!! "Arousing quickly, consummating prematurely" and suffering from the cumbersome fate of being crippled by ineptitude at
everything else but your work, made Dianna Christensen perennially wistful of testosterone laden aggression!! Aggregately, she invoked societal demise through channels of deductive reasoning!! Director, Sidney Lummet, was insistent that Dianna Christensen
be utterly devoid of vulnerability!! Mr Hackett (Robert Duvall) played the hatchet man for the CCA...A rough around the edges errand boy for Mr Jensen (Ned Beatty) who viewed this network as his big chance and that whatever worked worked ..Scruples were
never an issue, and ratings were pending exchange!! Howard Beale (Peter Finch) the "Angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our time" surprised even himself with his charismatic clout with the naive television audience!!! He was the UBS star-lighted
"Mad Prophet of the airways"...He could arouse anger and counter-culture overzealousness just by appearing crazy!!! One speech Mr Jensen (Ned Beatty) was a bit role but incredibly powerful in his delivery of the basic concept that ideology is for sale and
that television is the ultimate vehicle for manipulation!! Paddy Chayefsky is pioneer with this film as an acrimonious depiction for making world phenomena such as the fall of Communism and landing man on the moon to be minimized to a market share!!!..The
terms entertainment and egalitarianism now became pejorative!!!! The movie audience is hit with the terrifying reality that a societal caprice will induce the avaricious to capitulate to human catastrophe...Give Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lummet credit
for unveiling the revelation that ratings and the dollar take precedence over humanity!!! Howard Beale, the decrepit alcoholic, euphemistically transformed to the prescient paragon of intuitiveness, was alright so long as his innocuous chastisements did
not disrupt worldwide pecuniary acquisitions!! Once they did, he was quelled, and thus deemed a total ratings chart disaster!! Ultimately, Howard Beale, the once disheveled dipsomania-cal curmudgeon, turned Messianic Savonarola, becomes the typification
of the corporate guinea pig!!!!
This movie is avant-garde in it's ability to convey the message of greed first democracy second, or third, depending on the sponsors of the Howard Beale Show... An incident was determined traumatic or not traumatic by it's lucrative marketability
potential!! Terrorism is not terrorism if it means ratings!!! The character assassination of all the people in this movie was at the grass roots level!! Their avoidable flaws were entrenched as irreconcilable!! Any people with any conscience whatsoever
(William Holden & his wife) were decimated by reveille with selfishness, now it is imperative that they pick up the pieces!! How many imitations of this movie have there been...thousands!! Network however was the first movie of it's kind to effectively
portray the concept of "dying Democracy and dehumanization" probably the best movie of it's kind as well... This is an illustration of how heinous tragedy has to be stomached by the television audience, their response to clinical trauma transcends the
impact suffered by the actual victims involved!! It is a proverbial case of ratings eclipsing reality!! The film "Network" resonates itself to a point whereby the American people are reduced to meager by-products of the Fortune 500!! I wish there could be
a movie of this caliber made again!! I am angry that there has not been a sensationalistic masterpiece to come around for some time, and I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!!!
Summary: Guess What?Everything is a Commodity!!
--- JOYA ---
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