Some films are not just superb—they’re important. Yes, they are almost perfect works of art, but they also confront the viewer with often-sublimated truths that have the power to turn our corrupt world around. I’d venture to say that there are only a handful of such movies. They are analogous to novels like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, or Catch-22. (Why so many numbers…? Huh.) In the Christian tradition, we have The Screwtape Letters. You feel that if you just got these texts in front of enough people—or the right people—that real societal change would be an unavoidable consequence. (But, of course, man being what he is, it’s not.) This is the company that belongs around Sidney Lumet’s 1976 masterpiece, Network.
Appropriately released during the American bicentennial, the film won four Oscars: Best Screenplay for legend Paddy Chayefsky (Marty, Lenny), Best Actress for 70s icon Faye Dunaway, a posthumous Best Actor for Peter Finch, and the infamous Best Supporting Actress win by Beatrice Straight for exactly five minutes and two seconds of screentime (still the record for shortest performance to win an Oscar). It should have won more, but rather than face the convicting truth about their empty lives, people wanted to see a boxer run up steps. Go figure.
Network is a funny, devastating satire about what could happen were the news to become entertainment or TV to supplant books and newspapers. It is disturbingly prescient in its vision.
There’s not much more I want to say about this film because I want so badly for you to experience it for yourself. An amazing cast (Robert Duvall, William Holden, Ned Beatty…) delivers universally excellent performances, getting to speak several of the greatest film monologues ever written. (There’s a reason one scene could nab Straight an Oscar: this material is incendiary gold!)
There are so many great moments. “I said ‘What is this, a burning bush? I’m no Moses.’ The voice said ‘I’m not God. What does that matter?’” A romantic getaway during which Dunaway maintains rapid-fire sweet nothings about ratings, shares, and demographics—pausing only briefly for a matter-of-fact orgasm. The Black Power communist insurrectionist who ends up passionately arguing over her syndication rights and residuals. And, of course, Finch’s iconic mantra “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” (Or the very next scene, when this anti-establishment cri de coeur has been turned into a television catchphrase.)
Network lays bare the hypocrisy of television punditry, the public’s acceptance of TV as “the real” and their lives as “the unreal”, the illusion of change in a world run by corporations, the blatant usurping of the religious by the entertainment industry, the inhuman pragmatism of those in “an industry where success and failure are measured by the week”, the adoption of fictional tropes into our domestic choices, and the damning awareness (and apathetic acceptance) that underlies all of it.
I hadn’t rewatched this film in too long, and it had slipped closer and closer to the bottom of my Top 200 Films. After rewatching it last night, it’s moving to #7!