1976: Network

Network (Lumet, 1976) 6/10

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Howard Beale

Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky might not be American cinema's greatest satirist, but he is arguably its most well known. Despite starting as a creator of "kitchen sink" type dramas such as his award-winning Marty, Chayefsky quickly re-invented himself as a caustic cultural observer in the latter portion of the 1950's through the 1960's. Works ranging from Paint Your Wagon to the underrated duo of The Americanization of Emily and The Goddess, which brought him modest critical success.

Chayefsky's grandest acclaim came as a result of 1976's multiple Academy Award winning media satire Network directed by Sidney Lumet and featuring an all-star cast featuring Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway, William Holden and Peter Finch. The film examines the downfall of fictional television network UBS. Repeatedly last in the ratings, the network desperately yearns to reach an audience. Noticing the debts incurred by UBS' News Division, network head Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) yearns to merge the division into regular programming to garner greater ratings and revenues.

Yet, News Division head Max Schumacher (William Holden) resists such as manuever and is subsequently told that his erratic and depressed Howard Beale (Peter Finch) will be subsequently fired due to poor ratings. Crushed, the alcoholic Beale decides to commit suicide on the airwaves. Instead of pulling a trigger, Beale indulges in an oft-kilter tirade that expresses the frustration of the American public.

This inspires ambitious programming executive Dana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) to re-fashion the network around Beale and his spectre of appeasing the angry American viewer. Subsequently, Beale re-invents himself as a populist "mad prophet of the airwaves" encapsulating his frustration with his loss of personal and social indepedence by proclaiming "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and hosting a gaudy show in which everyday news is dressed up as entertainment.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, Network is the child of its screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky rather than its accomplished director. Often amusing, prophetic and boisterous, Chayefsky's talkative script about the corrupting nature of power, influence and media is one of American cinema's most revered. Pre-dating contemporary tabloid media, Chayefsky envisions a world in which demogogary and quarterly earnings are revered and honesty is downplayed.

Despite the film's topical freshness, the script is often filled with misogynistic opinions toward career women and self-righteous, cantankerous views about the history of television and the rise of youth culture. Although, the biting satire features skilled efforts by Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and William Holden, as well as an incredulous, over-the-top performance by Peter Finch as the maniacal Beale, Lumet's direction feels at times slick and stuffy.

Chayefsky's imprint is evident throughout Network, a film bristling with unbounded topical extremities and indulgent doses of vitrol. It is this film that Chayefsky's hallowed reputation rests upon. And for the most part, Network prophetically foreshadows a world of profit margins taking precedence over quality, accuracy and honesty. With multi-national conglomerates like Gulf + Western purchasing film studios during the Seventies, the screenwriter did not need to gaze far in order to seek out artistic inspiration. Yet, what is revelatory about Chayefsky's screenplay and Network in general is the manner in which the line between information and entertainment becomes blurred.

In Network, television once the new fangled usurper of cinematic audiences is no longer viewed as simply a cost-free distraction, but as a decayed vehicle that is symptomatic of a larger cultural and social devolution. Once profit takes precedence over art, both the artist and the audience become corrupted. Messages and opinions are dictated not by didactic intentions, but by dollars and cents funded by third-party revenues.

The corporate-cultural hegemony operating behind the scenes creates a platform designed to maximize the commercial potential of television at the expense of the brittle souls of the artist and the individual. Duvall's slick businessman is repeatedly reminded by the stream of former CBS News employees working in UBS' News Division that the news corps are expected to lose money. News is designed to inform the viewer, rather than enthrall.

Historically, these networks have maintained a journalistic independence designed to provide the fullest and most complete assertion of local, regional, national and global events. Yet, the new generation spearheaded by Duvall and Dunaway are unwilling to accept such a notion. In their minds, television is an entertainment medium and therefore a profit is expected to be extracted from this venue. Subsequently, the mode of news becomes perverted and stripped of all credibility in the name of advertising dollars.

This produces an environment allowing for the dessication of television. Ideologues, crackpots and the psychologically impaired become neo-messiahs for the masses: spouting hyperbolic social observations that the network passes off as entertainment. But to the audiences, the rants of psychics and cracked celebrities are taken not as mindless leisure, but and as honest assessments of society. Here, Chayefsky's script at its core demonstrates the rise of "infotainment" and crass, one-dimensional political punditry.

Whilst as anchor for the UBS Evening News, Howard Beale had one of the lowest viewer ratings in the country; resulting in his firing from the network. But as the revamped host of his carnivalesque news variety show, Beale becomes the hottest ticket in the country. Insulting the intelligence of his audience, Beale appeals for American citizens to educate themselves through reading literature, engaging in the democratic process and ironically turning off their television sets. Instead, audiences lap up his floor-crashing histronics and oral theatrics, rather than his message of individuality, social justice and civic interests.

With its church-like set design, Beale becomes the pastor of a nationally televised pulpit featuring a variety of acts more suitable for a circus than a news program. Here, he acquires the power and influence lacking in his previous position through an instable persona. In comparison, his cool mannered mentor Max Schumacher engages in an unsuccessful affair with Diane Christensen in order to try to reclaim part of the identity and power he once held.

While Holden's Max Schumacher appeals to his friend and his fellow UBS executives to protect the mentally instable Beale, the network ignores his pleas. As long as Howard Beale brings in dollars, the network cares less about Beale the person and more about Beale the commodity. When Beale's viewership declines, he simply produces more outlandish statements and ideas to rein in his audience. Thus, Beale's individuality, political opinions and intelligence is only respected as long as it results in a healthy financial return. Yet, when Beale's ravings tread too closely to UBS' business interests, the head of the network (Ned Beatty) orders him to change his stance. The world is no longer about nations, but business.

By infringing on the network and the nation's financial morality, Beale's opinions expose the duplicitious hypocrisy of the network's co-option of controversial political ideas. While Beale freely espouses his disgust toward the current democratic process and Diana Christensen attempts to use countercultural chic for her new show "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour," the network cannot allow discourse that strays into its paradigm. When Beale switches his argument to examining the dehumanization of society, he quickly loses viewers. Audiences previously engrossed by his antics that were endorsed and exploited by UBS are no longer interested in hearing about the same depressing, real-life material that once was the staple of the news: demonstrating their unwillingness to accept life's hardships in order to retreat to safely packaged formulaic programming and outrageous opinions.

* Network is available on DVD through Warner Home Video

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque