Review of Network (1976) by Bryan W — 16 Aug 2010

When Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky started working on this film, it was, to them, barely satirical. In fact, they thought most of the film mirrored what they were seeing in the media. Well, they were right then, and they're even more right now.

For starters, the script is perfect and it merges with the actors in such a way that most of their ridiculous dialogue sounds natural or even prophetic. It's rare that a film can pull off even one extended monologue, let alone six, one of which might be over five pages, but the actors manage to be incisive without losing their humanity and intelligent without looking unnatural.

The biggest and best of this bunch, of course, is Peter Finch as Howard Beale. Looking at his performance, it's incredibly hard to think it wasn't a factor in his untimely death, because the amount of energy he must have expended in the shooting of one of his monologues has to equal about one half of a soccer game. His death was untimely, but his legacy is this film. It really is the performance of a lifetime.

Naturally, all of his other oscar-nominated cohorts are in top form as well, a fact that is as much a testament to the writer as the director. William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Ned Beatty and Beatrice Straight knock their roles out of the park, the latter of the group making an indelible impression in just five short minutes and winning an Oscar as well.

It's hard to find ways to quantify just how good of a film this is; it's smart, it's funny, it's dramatic, and even though it was made almost forty years ago, it's even more relevant now as it was then.