"Network" • redux, rerun, rehash, review

"And another thing!"

Network came out in 1976. Classic movie with a dream team behind it. Sidney Lumet directed it; Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screenplay. Amazing performances by Peter Finch, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, et al. On top of that, great cinematography, editing, the whole nine yards. Bravo.

This amazing film blew me away in the multiplex. Saw it again on TV. It still blew me away. But ...

Not quite so much.

Why?

I'm still wrapping my head around that question.

Network is one of the greatest movies of all time. At least for the first hour or so. Then it crashes like a lead balloon. It eventually recovers, and makes it to a bang-up ending. But why'd the movie fall in the first place?

Let's start with what it is. The code that runs it. Not the acting, directing, cinematography, or editing. The screenplay. (Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay.) What is it? 

Network is a satire. Mostly. A caricature of TV network bullshit, specifically. Accurate? Who cares?

Satire doesn't have to be realistic, kind, or fair. But there's good caricature, and bad caricature. A bad caricaturist draws a blob and adds big ears. Voila! President Obama. A good caricaturist groks the essence of the face.

Chayefsky's caricature is pretty damn good. It should be. He knew what he was talking about. He was one of the greatest TV writers of all time, after all. The golden boy who wrote Marty in the Golden Age of television. Kudos. But he paid a price.

I imagine he sat through thousands of hours of TV executive meetings, grinding his teeth, seething with unspoken rage, and ultimately distilling that bile in his acid portrait of the corporate bastards. Money, money, money! That's all they think about!

Chayefsky kept his mouth shut and his ears open. The corporate dialog rings true ...

Diana: The Beale show Q score is down to thirty-three. Much of the loss occurred in the child and teen and eighteen-thirty-four categories which were our core market.

The man had a good ear, obviously. And probably kept a journal. But ...

The satire is a tasty coating. Bite into it, there's a hard candy shell at the center. Hardcore rants. Polemics. Lecture. Chayefsky had a thing or too to tell you. 

The movie functions as a delivery system for Howard Beale’s “I'm mad as hell speech”—and all the others. Beale is a stand-in for Chayefsky. The Voice of the Author. Giving you a piece of his mind. The rants are powerfully written. Passionate. From the heart. 

Unlike the portraits of the network executives, Chayesky's portrait of Howard Beale isn't realistic. Hell, neither is Swift's Modest Proposal. Or Heller's Catch-22. Rants or not, it's still great satiric. writing.

That's not the problem. 

The problem is the B story. The romance between Diana Christensen and Max Schumacher. It doesn't add up. Based on the actors' ages, he's 58 years old; she's 35. Max is an old-school TV journalist with solid convictions; Diana is an opportunistic sell-out. He's about substance; she's about empty style. He's on his last legs, she's young and on her way up. What the hell does she see in him? What the hell does he see in her?

Diana should be manipulative and seductive. She should fake Howard out with a false front, adore, admire, flatter and f***k. Instead, she natters on about biz statistics when they're in the sack. It's about as sexy as banging an adding machine. 

A missing scene could make you buy it. Max could say he loves her superficiality. He's pissed his youth away on truth. In a perverse middle-aged act of defiance, he throws it away and has an affair with a sexy fraud. 

But there's no explanation, no motivation. Faye Dunaway is alluring, so you're supposed to buy it. 

To dig the grave deeper ...

Chayefsky deliberately wrote their dialog in soap opera style. A parody of dull hackneyed writing runs the risk of actually being dull. This is. 

The Max and Diana subplot is a deadweight drag. Cut it, and the movie would soar. Chayefsky didn't cut it. He didn't want to kill his darlings. That's the problem.

But it's still a great movie.