Directed by Sidney Lumet.
Starring Faye Dunaway and William Holden.
Starring Faye Dunaway and William Holden.
In a Nutshell: A TV network exploits an insane news anchor for ratings.
For a film like Network not to collapse under its own thematic weight is no easy task. Ample praise has been doled out to Paddy Chayefsky’s script, seeping with bitterness, and the performances of the ensemble cast, all knocking out their Oscar moments with skill. But it is Sidney Lumet who keeps the movie’s gears from overworking themselves. Network attacks not only the television medium but also the divide of generational values, capitalism, sexism, social class, and on and on. Some of it played for laughs, other issues have the characters literally screaming at the viewer. Lumet strikes a realistic tone early on, inching slowly towards destruction. Never too much content at too fast a pace, allowing Lumet to balance Chayefsky’s bile with more humanistic undertones.
For a film like Network not to collapse under its own thematic weight is no easy task. Ample praise has been doled out to Paddy Chayefsky’s script, seeping with bitterness, and the performances of the ensemble cast, all knocking out their Oscar moments with skill. But it is Sidney Lumet who keeps the movie’s gears from overworking themselves. Network attacks not only the television medium but also the divide of generational values, capitalism, sexism, social class, and on and on. Some of it played for laughs, other issues have the characters literally screaming at the viewer. Lumet strikes a realistic tone early on, inching slowly towards destruction. Never too much content at too fast a pace, allowing Lumet to balance Chayefsky’s bile with more humanistic undertones.
That is not to say the movie is merciful to its audience or characters. The catalyst for the plot is the breakdown of new anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch). Fired for low ratings, he threatens to commit suicide on the air. Ratings shoot up prompting the show’s producer Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) to build a programming circus to complement Beale’s increasing madness. The old-fashioned news executive Max Schumacher (William Holden) loses his career and finds himself sucked into an affair with the icy Diana. Characters are either ruthlessly ambitious or become (unfairly) dragged down by TV’s soulless mechanisms. That these two groups are exclusive to each generation is surely no accident on Chayefsky’s part.
Network has an appealing dark edge that did not distance the audiences that Chayefsky was attacking. As much as the film attacks the broadcasting process, it is the viewers who support the market for such garbage that are scathed the most. Beale may be the clearest voice in a station full of inane blandness, but to the end, he continues to play ball in the network’s ratings game. At least until a higher calling drives him completely over the edge. If Network’s ending feels unsatisfying, it is hard to wonder how Chayefsky could have reined his viewpoints into a tidy conclusion. But it is just as well; thirty-five years and Network only becomes timelier.
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