I first decided to re-watch the 1976 film, Network,
in tribute to the late Robert Duvall. Of course I (like pretty much everyone)
had seen the movie when it first came out. This dark satire of the television
news industry—written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet—was a
major hit in a very good year for movies. When Oscar nominations were revealed,
Network was up for nine awards, including best picture. The top winner
turned out to be Rocky, but other big films of that year included All
the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, and Taxi Driver, so the competition was clearly fierce. Network won
for its original screenplay, and also nabbed three of the four acting awards:
for Beatrice Straight as a cast-off wife, for Faye Dunaway as a TV exec who’ll
do anything to manufacture a hit show, and (most memorably) for Peter Finch.
Finch, playing the newscaster whose firing because of low ratings sends him
mentally ‘round the bend, was the first star ever to win an Oscar posthumously.
He suffered a heart attack in January 1977, just after a TV talk-show appearance
to promote the film, and died at age 60.
Finch’s big line in Network—”I’m as mad as hell, and
I'm not going to take this anymore!"—is still with us. And so, of course,
is the idea that TV execs (like the one effectively played by Duvall in the
film) are more concerned with ratings than with quality content. But in many
respects, Network surprised me. First, of course, is the fact that
television today is far from what it was in the 1970s. Back then there existed
a limited number of major networks: CBS, NBC, ABC. Much of the American public
got its news from respected anchors like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor.
The film invents a fourth network, UBS, for dramatic purposes: when its
longtime anchorman goes berserk and starts hollering out of windows, a large
slice of the nation pays attention. Today, by contrast, our news sources are so
widespread and so splintered that it’s hard to imagine public attention being
focused on a single individual in quite the same way.
I was also surprised by the film’s shifting tone. From what
I’ve read, this was quite deliberate on the part of Chayefsky and Lumet, with
low-key realistic scenes at the start of the film gradually giving way to
stylized moments full of manic energy. A beautifully played early scene
features Finch, as the newly-fired anchorman, and the great William Holden as
his longtime pal who’s now the news division president. Two veteran newsmen,
they commiserate with one another about how times have changed, making jokes to
cover their mutual dismay.
But then Faye Dunaway’s Diana Christensen enters the
picture, and the whole mood changes. She sees in the crazed on-air
pronouncements of Howard Beal (Finch) a new direction for TV news broadcasts, and
quickly turns a hard news show into “infotainment,” of a sort that (alas) would
not be so surprising today. Moreover, while spinning journalism as a form of
public amusement, she also captures the heart of the long-married Holden, with
predictable results. Late in the film, as Diana looks for new stars-in-the-making,
there are some pointed references to a group of Symbionese Liberation
Army-style young radicals who’ll do pretty much anything to be featured on TV.
It’s very dark and, sometimes, very funny. Though the Patty Hearst era and the
near-shooting of President Ford by Squeaky Fromme seem like ancient history
now, Network brings them back to those of us old enough to
remember.
