“Network” felt so outlandish back in the 1970s that it was nominated for an award presented by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. The category was Best Science Fiction Film, simply because most people in 1976 refused to believe that television could go so far and so low as the movie shows. However, as the decades went by, the story proved to be quite prescient, and might even fall flat to contemporary audiences for depicting situations that felt absurd and hysterical back in the 1970s, but that we would find perfectly normal in the XXI century.
Here is an example: if you watch “Fifteen Million Merits”, the second episode from the British TV show “Black Mirror”, you will notice a grim similarity with Network. It isn’t exactly a remake, but more like a tribute adapts Chayefsky’s original story to match our current reality, while still trying to teach the same lesson - one that we will probably never learn.
“Network” was directed by Sidney Lumet, based on a script by Paddy Chayefsky, who worked side-by-side with the director, specially on the comedy scenes. At the time, Chayefsky had already won 2 Oscars for “The Hospital” and “Marty”, and Lumet had been nominated twice, for “Dog Day Afternoon” and “12 Angry Men”.
The movie was produced by Fred C. Caruso and Howard Gottfried, who had already produced “The Hospital”, which won Chayefsky an Oscar for the writing. They later worked together on “Altered States” (1980), which didn’t win a lot of awards, but became quite a cult classic.
Cinematography was provided by Owen Roizman. His name is not so familiar to most film fans, but he was behind the camera in many classics from the 1970s, giving a stark and exciting look to films such as “Three Days of the Condor”, “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three”, “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection”.
But one of the strongest elements in “Network” is the stellar cast and the memorable performances they deliver on screen. It received 5 nomination for an Oscar in the acting categories, a feat only 3 other films have matched (“Mrs. Miniver”, “From Here to Eternity” and “Bonnie and Clyde”) and none has done it since then. It was 2 nominations for Best Actor (Peter Finch and William Holden), Best Actress for Faye Dunnaway, Best Supporting Actor for Ned Beatty and Supporting Actress for Beatrice Straight. Finch, Dunnaway and Straight won. The only other film to ever win 3 acting Oscars was “A Streetcar Named Desire”.
Finch beat Holden and won the award, but sadly he had died right after production, becoming the first ever posthumous winner in an acting category of that award. Beatrice Straight won for her role as William Holden’s wife - even though she only appears on screen for about 5 minutes, making it the shortest performance ever to win an Oscar.
Dunnaway won and took her statuette to the Beverly Hills Hotel where Terry O'Neill took some photographs of the actress and the statuette, around 6:30am when the swimming pool was empty and the sunlight was warm but soft. Still sleepless after the ceremony, Dunnaway looked mysterious and bored next to her coveted award, while the floor was covered in newspapers with headlines mentioning the victory. O’Neill entitled his picture "The Morning After".
And let’s not forget Robert Duvall also appears in the picture. An actor of great taste, he may be seen in several other 1970s classics such as “MASH”, “The Godfather”, “THX 1138” and “Apocalypse Now”.
Another fascinating bit about the acting in “Network” is that Dunaway, Finch and Straight all had scenes with William Holden, yet none of them share the screen with each other. It almost as if Holden was good enough to give his colleagues something to work with to the point where they won awards, yet he didn’t get one himself. That is one of those things that are crucial to understand films, yet most critics won’t mention it, and the awards will never cover: sometimes, when we love a character in a movie, it may be because of the actor of actress doing the work, but sometimes it’s because of the script, or the direction.
There are cases, like “Blade Runner” for instance, where the actors work hard to save a movie from a bad director. Or actors and director together will rebel against a bad script defended by the producers. Every movie has its own back plot, the story behind the story, that makes them even more fascinating. Maybe William Holden should get an Oscar for “Best Actor Who Makes Other Actors Shine On The Screen”? But I suppose his success in “The Towering Inferno” had the Academy jurors turn their snubby noses on him. Or maybe they just didn’t want to give 2 awards to the same actor, since he already got one with Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17”.
Just another curiosity: Finch and Dunaway, two of the most important characters in the plot, never meet or talk during the entire film. If you think about the story, it makes perfect sense. A puppet should never meet its puppeteer.
Production & Filming
Paddy Chayefsky, a writer forged in the live TV theatre shows of the 1950s, was the first ever artist to win three (!) Oscars for scripts he wrote by himself: “Marty” (1955), “The Hospital” (1971) and “Network”. Come people claim that only Woody Allen matched this feat, but the first of his 3 oscars for writing was shared with Marshall Brickman. Besides the Oscar, Chayefsky’s script also won awards from the Writers Guild of America, New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics Awards, and many others. Chayefsky also wrote “Altered States”.
The great Sidney Lumet directed “Network” as part of a streak of hits that became classics and helped shape the 1970s as one of the greatest decades in film history. Generally remembered for dramatic tales such as “12 Angry Men” and “Dog Day Afternoon”, in “Network” Lumet took advantage of his partnership with Chayefsky to nail the comedic scenes, creating an interesting contrast between the drama and the farcical, which is crucial to make this story work. Lesser directors could easily have turned this exact same plot either into a full comedy that would undermine the impact, or just a straight drama that would fail to compel the audiences.
Lumet and Chayefsky were veterans from the live television days, accostumed to a form of working that was put down by many younger producers and directors. To put it simply, Lumet believed in rehearsals. Faye Dunaway once stated that “Network” was “the only film I ever did that you didn't touch the script”. She described the director as “one of, if not the, most talented and professional man in the world. In the rehearsals, two weeks before shooting, he blocks his scenes with his cameraman. Not a minute is wasted while he's shooting and that shows not only on the studio's budget, but on the impetus of performance.”
But even though “Network” won 3 Oscars for acting and 1 for its writing Oscar, it couldn’t win the Best Picture awards. This is understandable if you remember the competition included “Taxi Driver” and “All the President’s Men”. But “Rocky” winning that year was a punch in the stomach of a lot of people. In interviews, Lumet has admitted being disappointed and angry at that loss.
The “Rocky” thing at the 1976 Oscars remains a constant subject among film fans and many a blog post has been written about that. The thing is, all of the movies running that year were pretty strong. “Network” and “Rocky” competed with great films. “All the President’s Men” is an iconic 1970s film, widely regarded as one of the greatest films about journalism and politics ever made, directed by Alan J Pakula, who had directed “Klute” and “The Parallax View”. “Taxi Driver” remains a huge classic, loved by audiences and critics, frequently populating “top 100” lists and influencing dozens of movies, TV shows and comics. Scorsese was already well-regarded because of “Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore” and “Mean Streets” but for decades he was snubbed by the Academy (probably for living too much in NYC instead of Hollywood). “Bound for Glory”, a Woody Guthrie biopic directed by Hal Ashby, back then already a big name after having directed “Harold and Maude” and “The Last Detail”.
“Network” uses a few narrative strategies that are practically imperceptible when you first watch it. A nice touch from a master director like Lumet.
One of the way he uses the lighting. Network is a stark film set in a concrete jungle: the colossal skyscrapers and inhuman offices of corporate television networks. The first sequences of the film are shot in a documentary style, relying heavily on natural light and available sources. But as the story progresses and the TV channel begins its rise to the top, the movie itself slowly becomes more graceful, the images more glamorized, with softer fill lighting turning the naturalistic docudrama look into slick Hollywood-grade blockbuster - a transformation that works as visual metaphor for the entire plot.
The music is also used as a narrative element, being governed by the story rather than by sheer taste. It is mostly diegetic, happening naturally into the scene rather than imposed by the director’s will. We don’t have a score to tell us how to feel on every sequence, but on the other hand we are constantly being bombarded with music from the TV shows and jingles from commercial breaks, reinforcing the underlying idea of the script: we are constantly being manipulated by the media, on every possible aspect, without even realizing it.
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| Chayefsky created the weekly programming for the UBS channel. |
QUOTES
Arthur Jensen: “We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.”
Max Schumacher: “You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer.”
Howard Beale: “We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in *illusions*, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here.”
Howard Beale: “Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation; this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers; this tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world”.
Production details
a Howard Gottfried - Paddy Chayefsky production
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Written by Paddy Chayefsky
Cinematography by Owen Roizman
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / United Artists
Release date: November 27, 1976
Runtime: 2 hr 1 min (121 min)
Country: United States
Language: English
Sound Mix: Mono
Color: Metrocolor
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Negative Format: 35 mm
Budget: $3,800,000 USD
Box office: $23,689,877 USD
Awards: 4 Oscars, 4 Golden Globes, 1 BAFTA, and more.
