Network

"You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale!"

Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) is a "classic" that leaves me cold. This stentorian satire, lauded as profound and prophetic, is too clunky to be credible and too silly to take seriously.
Veteran anchorman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) threatens suicide on-air after losing his job at UBS. News director Max Schumacher (William Holden) asks him to get help, but Beale returns with a caustic, half-crazed rant. Programming manager Diana (Faye Dunaway) recognizes an opportunity; Beale becomes the "mad prophet of the airwaves," inspiring an army of followers. When Howard yields to corporate pressure, Diana and company consider drastic methods of replacing him.
It's hard to consider Network cutting-edge. America's intellectuals have tut-tutted television since the '40s, and it's been grist for cinematic satire since A Face in the Crowd (1957). Still, our modern glut of bloviating pundits and brain-dead reality shows owe something to Howard Beale. Television's virtues (its immediacy, immersion and all-seeing eye) are its shortcomings, reducing war, famine and suffering to 30 second sound bites.
Network gets mileage from Howard's demagogic ranting, a sane reaction to mid-'70s malaise: early scenes discuss Patty Hearst's kidnapping, Squeaky Fromme's attempt to shoot Gerald Ford, inflation and gas prices, spelling out a world gone mad. It's cliché to compare Howard to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, but those blowhards at least advocate something. Howard's speeches are simply the ravings of a madman.
Presumably that's the joke, since Network comes billed as satire. Chayefsky's other joke has characters acting blasé in absurd situations: Diana negotiating syndication rights with a Symbionese Liberation Army clone, executive Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) debating whether to kill Howard. Network repeats this dubious gag to diminishing returns, in service of an obvious message: modern networks will do anything for ratings.
Network wraps its media commentary with anti-capitalist posturing. UBS's demonic president (Ned Beatty) scolds Howard that the world revolves around money. Even Communist Laureen (Marlene Warfield), an Angela Davis clone, swoons to the profit potential of a terrorist variety show. Lumet upholds Max, an old friend of Edward R. Murrow, as a totem of journalistic integrity against soulless, sensationalist modern media.
Before Network settles into a satiric groove, Chayefsky inundates us with sentimentality. Max romances Diana, finding her a robot incapable of affection. Diana's a funny concept, climaxing while discussing ratings with Max, but not a convincing character; thus her romance with Max is neither poignant nor convincing. Neither are Max's scenes with his long-suffering wife (Beatrice Short), so earnestly played they seem imported from another movie.
And that's Network's fatal flaw. If Lumet and Chayefsky focused on absurdity, Network could be a black comedy of Dr. Strangelove caliber. Instead, they fall back on position speeches, endless harangues from Max and other characters about the soullessness of television, the worthlessness of modern society and the public's gullibility. Smug and condescending, they recall the chicken-eating dunce tuning out Marlon Brando in The Ugly American.
William Holden's bone-weary cynicism proves a good fit for Chayefsky's characterization. Faye Dunaway isn't so lucky, playing Diana with misplaced energy. Peter Finch is appropriately electrifying, in a role that earned him a posthumous Oscar. Robert Duvall, Wesley Adderly and Ned Beatty play nefarious corporate bigwigs. Beatrice Straight also won an Oscar for her underwhelming walk-on.
There are two Paddy Chayefskys: the warm, humanist writer of Marty, the parboiled polemicist of The Americanization of Emily. For all its posturing, Network amounts to smug kvetching from a grumpy old liberal who can't abide the modern age.