Another one of Sidney Lumet's incredible directorial feats, 1976's Network is a fantastic satirical film showcasing the many issues surrounding the television industry at that time. Although many of this film's aspects may have been a bit exaggerated for dramatic effect, the performances and the script lend themselves to creating a decently intriguing story. Released in a time when the business of the small screen was as harrowing as the business of film in today's age, this movie has a fantastic story interweaving the many subplots to create an engaging narrative. Even though the direction might not have been paced all too well, this is still a great film to analyze, especially to see how Lumet's style has evolved over the years.
After countless years of reporting for UBS, Howard Beale (Peter Finch) has an existential explosion live on air one night and threatens to commit public suicide. While UBS wants to fire him, the failing television network's executives see an intense spike in ratings and realize that they need to keep Beale's voice to survive. With a cast of characters all turning on each other for the sake of the network, they end up exploiting Beale in this look at how far one would go for the views. This movie attempts to cover a variety of topics, not just the exploitation of damaged individuals, but also themes such as betrayal and differing personal values. Things that I loved about this movie include its examination into these characters and how they interacted when faced with how to keep their company alive. Despite this film feeling a bit too long for its own good, I enjoyed the relationship between Max Schumacher (William Holden) and Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) and how their contrasting motivations led to their interesting subplot. Diana's story is fine on its own as it begins with a great, feminist purpose climbing up the ranks of this network, but unfortunately, she is almost made out to be a villain in this film's second half. I did not completely understand the reason for why she became so narrow-minded and despicable towards the second half of the film, but I'm at least glad that her story was given validity throughout the movie. The way that this cast of characters interacted was great as well, including the slew of other executives such as Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), Nelson Chaney (Wesley Addy), and Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty). All of the performances in this film were very charismatic as they each brought a certain light to their roles. This, of course, was aided by the intelligent and concise dialogue in the script written by Paddy Chayefsky. Elegance easily radiated from the pages onto the screen to make every word that was spoken engaging.
While the basic elements of making a film interesting were covered well in Network, there were a lot of the more technical elements that I felt were lacking. The cinematography from Owen Roizman was consistently dull and I could not differentiate many of this film's characters. While that also may be in part because of the lack of interesting production design, there were not that many shots that stood out to me at all. And especially in a film like this which deals with low-action drama, the camera has to be able to adapt to keep the audience's eyes on the screen. Other issues that I had include Lumet's generic direction and an absence of relevance. Lumet's pacing throughout this movie was not very smooth, as I feel this was much longer than it realistically needed to be. I became very unenthused towards the second act, as this could have moved a whole lot quicker. Of course, this criticism is mirrored by a monologue from Max towards the end of his relationship with Diana in which he is talking about their affair as if it were a script. These comparisons were a bit too on-the-nose for me and I felt that much of this film's attempted tension was too exaggerated for the sake of satire. Particularly the conclusion, in which the irony of Beale getting killed live on air was a bit too nonsensical. I also had a lot of trouble relating to this film's subject matter because television is not nearly as important as it once was. I'm certain that television executives are not nearly as lively or involved as many of these characters were, but then again, without that part of the writing, this film would be even duller. I can understand why this film is considered a screenwriting classic due to its exquisite handling of the themes, but I just could not get behind some of its strange choices throughout.
Sidney Lumet's Network is a terrific look into the world of television and how these characters treated each other, even though I'm certain much of this was dramatized a bit too much. Though not nearly as riveting or dramatic as 12 Angry Men, I still enjoyed this film and can appreciate the value of how impactful it must have been when it was released.
My Rating: ★★★½
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