Network

As I mentioned in my post on Mad as Hell, the book about Network, it made me want to see Network again, and I'm pleased to say it holds up extremely well. The primary reason is the script by Paddy Chayefsky, which contains some of the most limber dialogue I've ever heard in a film.

It is 1975, and America is in turmoil. There  have just been two assassination attempts on the president. Inflation is high, as is unemployment. And at UBS, the fourth network, Howard Beale, (Peter Finch) their graying eminence, has just been fired with two weeks notice.

He takes his first opportunity post-sacking to tell the audience he will kill himself on the air. That gets him pulled off the air immediately, and his friend, president of the news division Max Schumacher (William Holden) fears for his sanity. He allows him one more chance, but Beale tells the audience he's run out of bullshit.

This catches the interest of Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), the head of entertainment programming. She notes that Beale has drawn extra ratings, and wants to keep him as some sort of  "a mad prophet exposing the hypocrisies of America." Much to Schumacher's chagrin, this works, though they are attracted to each other (this is the weakest part of the script--I just can't see him falling for her). She takes over the show, and it turns into something of a circus, with soothsayers and gossips, but "it's a fat, big-titted hit."

This leads Diana to bolder shows, such as The Mao-Tze Tung Hour, which features a terrorist group called The Ecumenical Liberation Army, who film their own bank robberies. But her ride ends when Beale bites the hand that feeds him, and the president of the parent corporation (Ned Beatty) tells him "he is meddling with the primal forces of nature." Diana and Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), a corporate henchman, decide the only thing they can do is have Beale killed. "This was the story of Howard Beale: the first known incident of a man killed because he had lousy ratings."

So what makes Network so great? The dialogue, as I said, is the start. The whole film is quotable, from all of Beale's rants, including the spectacular "Mad as Hell" speech, and the stunningly intelligent repartee between Schumacher and Diana. She is a soulless person--when they go on a romantic date all she can talk about his business. He tells her, "You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer." She doesn't disagree, as her world is ratings and shares.

Then there is the scene when Schumacher tells his wife, Beatrice Straight, that he's leaving her for Diana. This scene won Straight an Oscar, but it was almost cut, and fighting had to go to keep it in. She tells Schumacher: "This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it. And, if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I hurt. Don't you understand that? I hurt badly."

Secondly, this is superbly acted film. Five performers received Oscar nominations, and three, Dunaway, Finch (posthumously), and Straight won. Finch is towering as a man fluttering in the wind like a loose door, but I think my favorite performance may be the bombastic turn by Duvall, who embodies every management cretin I've ever come across. When Schumacher tells him, "Fuck you, Hackett," the look on Duvall's face is priceless.

The director is Sidney Lumet, who mostly keeps out of the way, and was an old pro even then, so every shot is seamless, particularly the "Mad as Hell" scene, which uses an upward view as Beale stands and says, "I want you to get up and go to the window." I actually replayed that scene while watching the DVD, it's one of the best sequences ever put on celluloid.

As mentioned in the book review, what makes Network so interesting almost forty years later is how prescient Chayefsky was. With the utter inanity of reality shows to news as entertainment, UBS was a blueprint for Fox News, although all the networks have been guilty of turning the once august business of TV journalism into a side-show. I shudder to think of what Chayefsky would think of it today. And I loved the scenes of the arch liberal Angela Davis stand-in negotiating a contract. "Don't fuck with my distribution rights!" We're all capitalists under the skin.

Network is a very special film, one that started as dark satire and ended up as an accurate prediction. If you haven't seen it, what are you waiting for?