This is a big day...

...back from my hiatus with 3 reviews in a day.

This is the next entry on the list of the AFI Top 100 Films (10th Anniversary Edition) that I'm trying to watch in a calendar year.

I published a link to the rules in the last one, so I'm not putting it here.

Let's go...this one's a thinking man's film.  Just the way I likes 'em.

Film 33

33.  "Network" (AFI Rank #64)

There are several years in this list that have multiple entries.  The most in any given year is four.  1976 is one of the years with four entries.  (So is 1982...if you can believe that - and "Gandhi," the Best Picture winner, isn't even one of them)

Directed by Sidney Lumet, "Network" lost out on the Oscar for Best Picture to "Rocky."  Lumet also lost to "Rocky" director John G. Avildsen for Best Director.  Also on the list of the top 100 from that year? "Taxi Driver" and "All The President's Men."  Scorsese wasn't even nominated for Best Director.  Film was a whole lot better 40 years ago, that's for damned sure.

I'm digressing.  "Network" is a terrifyingly prescient film about entertainment, business, and our tastes as Americans.  Centered around (but really tangential to) the puppet being used by his superiors, Howard Beale (Peter Finch), "Network" is a plunge into the madness of the American consumer.

The tone of the piece is set immediately, as the second sequence in the film shows us Howard Beale, fired from the fictional UBS television network as its news anchor, as he announces that he is leaving in two weeks, and that his last broadcast will feature him killing himself live on television.  Certainly this is remarkable stuff, but what is so perfect about the scene is that the majority of it is shot in the control room, and that the people assigned to putting on the news show DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HOWARD SAID.  Not one of them.  As word reaches them, it becomes obvious that Howard must be removed forcibly from the studio, which is also broadcast live.  Howard's long time friend Max (William Holden - who appears again and again in top 100 films) is forced to remove Howard from the air immediately, with no two week grace period.  Max is a longtime news man, who has grown old during the time of television, presumably starting his career as one of its pioneers.

As Howard begins to gain exposure for his on camera antics, corporate leaders in the form of a soulless, ambitious executive named (not so subtly) Hackett, played by Robert Duvall, and a soulless, ambitious programming director named Diana Christiensen, played by Faye Dunaway, are drawn to the idea of exploiting Howard for financial and power gains.  Diana sees Howard as the ticket to making her ideas of a radical network a reality, and Hackett sees nothing but dollar signs, and his own stature increasing.  One of Diana's ideas, which is in the works, is the "Mao Tse Tung Hour," which will feature the Ecumenical Liberation Army, a radical group who has a Patty Hearst type heiress in its folds, and a group that has garnered fame for actually filming its exploits.  She wants a show that shows a new crime perpetuated by the ELA each week to kick off the show, followed by discussion, etc.  It's ghoulish.  It's "COPS."

Gradually, Howard becomes more and more unhinged, and when he finally snaps and tells the viewers to run to their windows and scream "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!"  Howard has tapped into the anger that permeates society, and found his audience.  And it just keeps growing.  Not unlike a certain billionaire investor from New York in our current discussions.  There is always a market for faceless rage, and Diana, Howard, and Hackett are making a killing off it.

Of course, Max is having none of it, but he finds himself wrapped up with Diana, to the point where he leaves his wife (Beatrice Straight) for her.   Eventually, Howard's appeal begins to wane, and in a chilling scene, the heads of the network decide to kill him, live on the air.  We believe, until the moment that it happens, that it can't be real...but it is.  And we are reviled.

So.  What about this film makes it so great?  Acting.  Storytelling.  Acting.  Directing.  Storytelling.  Directing.  Acting.

This film is genius.  Lumet's direction is tight, inspired, and brilliant.  As the film opens, it's dark/gritty.  As it progresses, it becomes more and more sanitized...like television.  Lumet was a master filmmaker, and one who never received the thing he deserved...an Oscar for Best Director.  Like Kubrick.  His biography is a list of brilliant films, all of which seemed to be released at times when other films more "Oscaresque" were released.  In the case of "Network," it may simply have been a case of too many great films in one year, and "Rocky" emerged because it was the one that left voters with the best feeling.  I don't know.  I know this film is superior to "Rocky."  The sequence with Diana never shutting up about what is going on with the network, even as she makes love to Max, is inspiring.  That's a little to do with writing, but the director makes it sing.  This aria soars.

Story.  Paddy Chayefsky DID win best screenplay.  That we find so many people to care about, and that a character as small as Max's wife could be so well fleshed out as to merit an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress despite only 5 minutes and 40 seconds of screen time, well...it's a wonder.  Farcical, we laugh at the script...until...given out 2015 sensibilities...we realize that everything this guy wrote basically came true.  Tell me that Glenn Beck isn't Howard Beale.  I've already made the "COPS" comparison.  The script, now, is chilling.  Plus.  You get great lines like "Nine hundred fucking phone calls complaining about the language."  "Shit."   The satire fairly drips from this piece.  Watch the scene of the lawyers and network executives parsing the contract language and payments with the leadership of the ELA, and you know you're watching a masterpiece.  That's what this script is.  A pure and simple masterpiece.

Acting.  This was the last film to receive 3 Oscars for acting.  The aforementioned Straight got hers, Faye Dunaway was given Best Actress, and Peter Finch won posthumously for Best Actor.  Also nominated were Holden and Ned Beatty, who was quoted as saying, when saying that actors should NEVER turn down work:  "I worked a day on 'Network' and got an Oscar Nomination for it. All the acting in this film is honest, committed work.  Duvall didn't get nominated, but I find it hard to believe that in any other year, he wouldn't actually be awarded, let alone nominated for his work. You want to learn how to act?  Watch this.  Finch is unflinching.   Holden is a clinic in cool.  Straight is heartbreaking.  Dunaway is stone cold.  Duvall is befuddled ambition.  Beatty is pure passion.  I imagine Lumet had a lot to do with all of this as well.

I can't say too much more about this film.  It's a terrific film, and I wish that more films today felt like this one.  Gritty, biting, honest, and ultimately fantastical.  It's a wonder.  Great films leave us with questions...I defy you to watch "Network" and not have a lot of them.

Welp.  Ebert and I are there again.  Damn me.