2008 Woodie Awards
DVD & Movie Reviews
Tony Millett & David Coley
Issue date: 9/10/07 Section: Culture
- Page 1 of 3 next >
Old: 'Network'
TV and films have made fairly accurate predictions about what life could be like in the future.
Chaplin's "Modern Times," from 1936, presented us a nightmare of video surveillance.
In the late sixties, "Star Trek" showed us a more benevolent future of tiny hand-held communication devices, sliding doors and little cards that slipped into computers.
Francois Truffaut imagined wall-sized flat screen TVs with "Fahrenheit 451" in 1966.
Nothing compares with the chill of recognition that comes from watching "Network," directed by Sidney Lumet in 1976.
It had the prescience to predict not only the "reality" TV show and the commodification of the news industry, but also the rise of multinational conglomerates and globalization. Yikes!
Howard Beale, the U.B.S. network's senior anchor, is a dinosaur. He's a throwback to the glory days of Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid, giants of the early broadcast news business. But once his ratings begin to slip, the network gives him the boot, and Beale, Peter Finch, in an Oscar winning performance, announces that he will commit suicide on the air during his last broadcast.
This sets off a storm of biblical proportions, with some at the network wanting to have Beale committed and others exploring the possibility, after the ratings go up, of giving the poor man a platform for his rants in a half hour show.
The programs climax with an apoplectic Beale crashing to the floor in a crescendo of pique.
Every time I see televangelists working an audience, I'm reminded of Beale and half expect to see the eyes roll back in their heads while they collapse in a heap.
The problem is, Beale really means it. He's cynically manipulated by a new, young breed, a cold blooded producer who also proposes to televise actual bank robberies and assassinations. We haven't quite gotten there yet.
The film's most immediate crisis, though, deals with the way in which TV has, according to Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay, betrayed its promise to be an educator as well as an entertainer.
TV and films have made fairly accurate predictions about what life could be like in the future.
Chaplin's "Modern Times," from 1936, presented us a nightmare of video surveillance.
In the late sixties, "Star Trek" showed us a more benevolent future of tiny hand-held communication devices, sliding doors and little cards that slipped into computers.
Francois Truffaut imagined wall-sized flat screen TVs with "Fahrenheit 451" in 1966.
Nothing compares with the chill of recognition that comes from watching "Network," directed by Sidney Lumet in 1976.
It had the prescience to predict not only the "reality" TV show and the commodification of the news industry, but also the rise of multinational conglomerates and globalization. Yikes!
Howard Beale, the U.B.S. network's senior anchor, is a dinosaur. He's a throwback to the glory days of Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid, giants of the early broadcast news business. But once his ratings begin to slip, the network gives him the boot, and Beale, Peter Finch, in an Oscar winning performance, announces that he will commit suicide on the air during his last broadcast.
This sets off a storm of biblical proportions, with some at the network wanting to have Beale committed and others exploring the possibility, after the ratings go up, of giving the poor man a platform for his rants in a half hour show.
The programs climax with an apoplectic Beale crashing to the floor in a crescendo of pique.
Every time I see televangelists working an audience, I'm reminded of Beale and half expect to see the eyes roll back in their heads while they collapse in a heap.
The problem is, Beale really means it. He's cynically manipulated by a new, young breed, a cold blooded producer who also proposes to televise actual bank robberies and assassinations. We haven't quite gotten there yet.
The film's most immediate crisis, though, deals with the way in which TV has, according to Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay, betrayed its promise to be an educator as well as an entertainer.
Be the first to comment on this story