‘The time has come to say … is ‘dehumanisation’ such a bad word?” The speaker is Howard Beale, the sweat-drenched, swivel-eyed TV news anchor in this classic 1976 satire from screenwriter Paddy Chayevsky and director Sidney Lumet, now on rerelease. Depressed by the loss of his wife and by getting fired due to dwindling audiences, Beale proclaims he will kill himself live on air and is then re-hired as a colossal popular and then populist success, his celebrity delirium turning him into a crazy prophet, telling millions of Americans to scream out of the window that they are as mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Beale is a mixture of Billy Graham, radio star Orson Welles telling America the Martians are coming, and that notorious ratings-obsessive Donald Trump.
Network finds its place in the distinctive Hollywood tradition of showing TV as meretricious, mindless and corrupt … as opposed, presumably, to movies. It’s a classic 70s mainstreamer, a terrifically well-made, well-written talking point to put alongside other richly enjoyable small-screen dramas such as Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George from 1968, James L Brooks’s Broadcast News in 1987, Robert Redford’s Quiz Show from 1994 – and Antonio Campos’s Christine, about Christine Chubbuck, the American TV news reporter who in 1974 really did kill herself live on the air. Chayevsky denied she was the inspiration for this film. Peter Finch gives an uproarious performance as Beale, for which he posthumously won the best actor Oscar after succumbing to a fatal heart attack in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel – a fate hardly less satirical or poignant than Beale’s own.
