Network (1976)
Directed by Sidney Lumet
When veteran anchorman Howard Beale is forced to retire his 25-year post because of his age, he announces to viewers that he will kill himself during his farewell broadcast. Network executives rethink their decision when his fanatical tirade results in a spike in ratings.
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The suicide never takes place but — very much as in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe — the citizenry rallies to his support.
As sociopolitical satire, the movie was decades ahead of its time, even scooping 1976’s Network.
Most of them are merely accidents that erupt from satire, like Mike Judge’s “Office Space” or Sidney Lumet’s “Network”; even rarer among them are those where filmmakers appear to be looking through some proverbial crystal ball, and channeling its images into frames of celluloid with startling cognizance.
Stanley Kubrick’s key image in “A Clockwork Orange” – in which the “hero” Alex is forced to watch hours of violent entertainment while his eyes are forced to stay open – provided an early metaphor of the forceful nature of broadcast carnage, but few could have guessed that the once-informative news outlets could gradually decay into the doldrums of anti-information.
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This truth is in no small part thanks to the contributions of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky ("Marty," "The Americanization of Emily," "Altered States"), director Sidney Lumet ("12 Angry Men," "The Pawnbroker," "Fail-Safe," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict"), and stars Peter Finch, Fay Dunaway, William Holden, and Robert Duvall.
This truth is in no small part thanks to the contributions of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky ("Marty," "The Americanization of Emily," "Altered States"), director Sidney Lumet ("12 Angry Men," "The Pawnbroker," "Fail-Safe," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict"), and stars Peter Finch, Fay Dunaway, William Holden, and Robert Duvall.
This truth is in no small part thanks to the contributions of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky ("Marty," "The Americanization of Emily," "Altered States"), director Sidney Lumet ("12 Angry Men," "The Pawnbroker," "Fail-Safe," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict"), and stars Peter Finch, Fay Dunaway, William Holden, and Robert Duvall.
This truth is in no small part thanks to the contributions of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky ("Marty," "The Americanization of Emily," "Altered States"), director Sidney Lumet ("12 Angry Men," "The Pawnbroker," "Fail-Safe," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict"), and stars Peter Finch, Fay Dunaway, William Holden, and Robert Duvall.