This Tuesday we continue our feature where we revisit classic films and ask you: does it still hold up? Last timewe took on 2001: A Space Odyssey, this month's challenge is the 1976 classic Network, with movie critic Garen Daly leading the charge.
Written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, Network is a satirical film about about the fall, rise, and fall of Howard Beale, the anchorman for the UBS Evening News. It's about the television industry running fast and fantastically off the rails.
Nearly 40 years ago movie critic Vincent Canby characterized Network this way:
It's about old-fashioned newsmen like Max Schumacher (William Holden), who have scruples and are therefore impotent. It's also about Arab oil, conglomerates, and new-fashioned hucksters like Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), a television executive whose sensitive reading of the viewing audience ("the American people are turning sullen") prompts her to put a seeress on the eleven o'clock news (to predict what will happen tomorrow).
Today, with broadcast mainstays like Brian Williams and Bill O'Reilly getting tangled up in webs spun from their own spin; with the likes of John Stewart seeming more legitimate than the news anchors they satirize; in an era where reality TV is no longer a novelty but the norm-- will Network seem prescient? Or 40 years on will Network miss the mark?
