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Remembering Robert Duvall and Revisiting Network (1975). A Film That Saw the Future Before We Were Ready to Admit It. One of Cinema’s Greatest Warnings Disguised as Entertainment.@thefed132d

Remembering Robert Duvall and Revisiting Network (1975). A Film That Saw the Future Before We Were Ready to Admit It. One of Cinema’s Greatest Warnings Disguised as Entertainment.

With him passing today Robert Duvall is in mind. I will do my Three Tune Tuesday post tomorrow and instead discuss a legendary film tonight. Robert Duvall has given us one of the most remarkable acting careers in American film. With a body of work that stretches across decades and includes everything from The Godfather to Apocalypse Now, he has always brought a grounded intensity that made every character feel lived in. Thinking about that legacy today made me want to revisit one of my personal favorites, the 1976 film Network, a movie that feels less like satire now and more like prophecy.

Directed by Sidney Lumet and written by the legendary Paddy Chayefsky, Network is often labeled a drama, but that barely scratches the surface. It is a savage critique of television, corporate culture, and the commodification of human emotion. Lumet films it with a clinical sharpness, letting the performances and dialogue do the damage rather than relying on stylistic tricks.

Duvall plays Frank Hackett, a rising network executive who represents the cold, ambitious future of media. His performance is all control and calculation. Where others in the film unravel, Duvall tightens the screws. He is the embodiment of the shift from journalism as a public trust to television as a profit machine.

The film’s most famous element is Peter Finch’s Oscar-winning turn as Howard Beale, the news anchor who spirals into on-air madness and becomes a ratings phenomenon. Finch delivers the iconic “I’m as mad as hell” speech, but what makes the performance extraordinary is how believable the descent feels. It is theatrical, yes, but rooted in genuine despair about the modern world.

Faye Dunaway is equally powerful as Diana Christensen, a programming executive who sees tragedy, outrage, and instability not as warning signs but as marketable content. Her character is chilling because she never thinks she is doing anything wrong. She is simply chasing numbers, engagement, and growth—concepts that feel eerily familiar in today’s algorithm-driven media landscape.

William Holden provides the moral center as Max Schumacher, an old-school newsman watching the profession he loves turn into spectacle. His exhaustion mirrors the audience’s realization that something important is being lost. Holden plays it with restraint, which makes the surrounding chaos hit even harder.

What makes Network stand out as one of the greatest films ever made is how accurately it predicted the future. The movie imagined a world where news divisions would be judged by entertainment value, where outrage would be monetized, and where corporations would shape narratives to serve quarterly earnings. That is no longer dystopian fiction. It is daily reality.

The idea of turning a mentally unstable man into a television brand seemed absurd in the 1970s. Today, it feels like a blueprint. The film foresaw the merging of news, entertainment, and marketing into one endless feedback loop designed to keep audiences watching no matter the cost.

Lumet’s direction keeps everything grounded in realism, which is why the film has aged so well. There are no futuristic gadgets or stylized flourishes to date it. The horror comes from boardrooms, contracts, and calm conversations about exploiting human breakdown for profit.

Duvall’s role is crucial because he doesn’t play a villain in the traditional sense. Frank Hackett is not evil. He is efficient. He believes in growth, leverage, and shareholder value. That makes him far more unsettling, because he represents systems rather than individuals. The film argues that the real danger is not one bad actor, but an entire structure that rewards the wrong instincts.

Chayefsky’s screenplay is razor sharp, filled with monologues that feel like stage performances yet never lose their cinematic power. The dialogue is dense, angry, and darkly funny, capturing a society beginning to sense it was losing control of its own institutions.

Nearly fifty years later, Network plays less like satire and more like documentary. The film warned that once information becomes entertainment, truth becomes negotiable. Looking at today’s media environment, it is hard not to feel that Chayefsky and Lumet saw this coming with terrifying clarity.

For me, that is why Network remains not just a great film, but an essential one. It is a reminder that technology changes, delivery systems evolve, but the tension between profit and principle never goes away. And anchored by performances like Robert Duvall’s, it shows how quietly that shift can happen—until suddenly it defines everything.

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›'Network' by Sidney Lumet Review: The reality of television's mental poison@namiks730d

These days there are a lot of films that throw out social commentary. Perhaps more than there ever have been in the past two decades as Hollywood throws out whatever's hot on the agenda pushing. It's almost a challenge to find something that isn't political or commentary on something at this point. Sometimes this is done well, but this often feels like something that has been done to death already with little room for creativity due to how simple it is to just say something is wrong or bad. The more creations come out, the harder it is to say the same thing in a different tone. Which is why this film from 1976 is so interesting to me. I haven't seen a lot of films from the 70s that have actually really made an impact on me, and definitely not a lot that manage to not only summarise the present for them, but also predict and summarise the future in such a good manner. I think of My Dinner with Andre and how that also predicted the future, the decline of people. A society that is lost and often just lets life roam by without a care in the world or even awareness that it's happening. That fragility of life and what it means to be a flawed, conscious being. I found that Network did a similar thing, taking a look at the society of the 70s in New York, fully aware of where things were heading, while throwing out a warning that it was already too late to change anything.

It's an incredibly bleak film that doesn't feel like it's a warning to people to make changes, but that there's a set destination already chosen by the elites and there's nothing that can be done to stop it, if anything the final solution to attempting to fix things is that those elites will just kill you and remove you from the competition and threat of their capital and power. This film came about around the time that the television set became a bit more normalised within the average household, now no longer such an item of luxury, and generally the usual item that is found within the home of any family. The era of news television and series. Families hurdled together to spend the evening consuming something to be considered as entertainment, curious of the various happenings around the world as information began to flow much faster than usual, away from the standardised newspaper and radio, this time with real footage and a more theatrical performance. How thrilling! The chaos of the world within the small screen that is before your eyeballs. The drama! The death and destruction! Oh, the greatness of the television! Promoting the truth to us all through our trustworthy news media!

Network looks at the growth of news media and the ways in which television is utilised as a weapon for profit and power. The strength it has to reveal the truth to the masses, but the problematic case of the masses being willing to believe whatever the television says. Now a preacher of doom and consumption rather than a tool to help and inform the people. It's easy to look at the present and notice the problems, the manipulation and the brainwashing that comes from the media. Network is a film that surprisingly came out when it did. Yet it remains an unforgettable lesson.

Network

Network begins with an aged newscaster that seems miserable within the gritty 70s New York. He tells a friend that he plans to kill himself; both are miserable and seem drunk, done with life and having spent their greatest years already. What follows is our protagonist going on live television and telling the world that next week he will kill himself live on television. Naturally ratings shoot up as everyone's curious as to what will happen, and instantly the network sees profit in this event. Our protagonist proceeds to throw out rage induced rants on society, the problems with life and why he's done with it. Telling the people precisely what they have failed to notice for the longest time. He exposes the greed of corporations, the decline of the United States of America as money becomes the one true language everyone speaks, as the nation continues to sell itself off to the very people it claims are its greatest enemies. Sounds similar to the present, right? The introduction to globalism that threatens the lives of citizens as jobs are removed from the market, and companies are now owned and operated by outside parties that seek to damage and control the US more and more. Speaking to truth on live television, the ratings continue to increase massively. The nation loves it.

The network sees profit. They encourage our protagonist to keep going out, to keep ranting. He does. He speaks of a new problem each time. Constantly telling the people to stand up and take what belongs to them, to reclaim their broken nation. Imagine that for a moment. Now imagine the implication of people instantly being controlled by the people on television. Hang on, that sounds like the present, no? The people of the media speak, the public listens and acts. No longer a free people. Incapable of their own thoughts and decisions, now told how to think and act and what to do, and they abide to every call like a herd of sheep being bundled together by a small barking dog. There's power in the people, but more power in turning rage into a weapon within the people, directing that attention to whoever is being told is their enemy. Perhaps to some degree there's truth to it, but it shows how simple the brainwashing takes place within media, how people will be told to stand up and shout, and will do so before even really questioning as to why. In one scene people are told to do just that, to get up and go outside and shout a specific phrase. They do, shouting out into the city in unison.

During the pandemic, the media threw out these weird agendas in which we must all go outside in England and clap for some reason, as to supposedly praise the essential workers that operated while many remained inside at home. People willingly did so. People that didn't were attacked. Few rarely ever considered what it meant to get up because the man on tv said to and clap at your door to nobody. A strange feeling of success and patriotism, a moral victory over nothing. The reality is that many were controlled. Told specifically what to think and that they'd be good for doing so. Nobody gave question as to who was responsible for the initial problems to begin with though, or who was profiting from this venture in the first place. This example shows how the media can direct attention, cause misdirection and pursue hysteria for profit. And Network shows this incredibly well as the whole segment becomes nothing but about money and increasing the quarterly income. Everyone behind the scenes in the network is talking about the next big hit, the money and the success. All of them seem old and void of life.

Though things took a turn for the worst when our protagonist speaks against the network and its maintainers. Threatening everything they had planned and killing the ratings in the process. It shows how quickly things get shut down once the tide turns. And the chaos is really met in the performances of the film, over two hours but a long, stressful feeling of constant motion as everyone scrambles to create and pursue greed. Each of these performances is great, even as the film attempts to show some humanity even in them. Their own problems within life. Shot on 35mm film, it's all very beautiful. A film that shows the decayed New York City in the 70s, as well as the business side of the city that still flourished within offices, and the many faces that worked behind the screens. Network is an incredibly strong film, one I won't forget. And there's no other real way to describe it without simply stating that it reveals the cancer that thrives on the population of every nation. The manipulators that seek money no matter who gets hurt in the process. Their interest to tell the people whatever it is they want to hear providing they get richer in the process. And their tides turn the moment it stops being profitable.

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›Network 1976@steemychicken11170d
"I'm a human being god damnit, my life has value!"

The movie centers around a news anchor who learns of his impending layoff and decides to kill himself live on air. However, he instead announces his retirement after being convinced by the channel. Howard Beale, played wonderfully by Peter Finch (who posthumously won an Oscar for his role), delivers a chilling monologue that is as timely today as it was then. Paddy Chajewski's screenplay, which won three Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, is a bitter satire on the cannibalistic world of the spectacle and society's vicious cycle of Procrustean admonition and re-feeding into the logic of social automatism. Lumet's direction adds a dystopian feel and futility to this unequivocal masterpiece. Despite losing the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars to Avildsen's Rocky that year, Network's timelessness is evident in the following scene, and the shock of Paddy Chajewski's words through Peter Finch's mouth.

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, yet we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, god damn it! My life has value!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them, and stick your head out and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:"I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!""

Words that when read or heard by watching the movie ring a bell and makes you thing is this about today ?

A great movie hope anyone that watches is if after reading this likes it an anyone who watched feel free to comment !

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›Network (1976) - Characters@lionsuit2954d

Few can write a script as smart as Paddy Chayefsky could, especially one regarding the television industry.

This is a multiple watch film. Thick. Surreal. Telling. (As I write this, another Network post already comes to mind.)

The characters in this kind of piece are very important, and they deliver from the page to the screen and in between.

Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) and Diana Christensen (played by Faye Dunaway) are the two that grab me today.

Robert Duvall isn't discussed here, though I will acknowledge that he crushes it and probably deserves his own blog all together.

Howard's early actions are the inciting incident of this film. A man on the brink of insanity, on the brink of genius, claiming to kill himself on live TV.

Director Sidney Lumet was nervous about casting a non-American English accent. He made the right call though. Finch gives a great performances. Without this character's full blow commitment, and near religious passion, without their belief, observable in the legs and deep in the eyes, the film falls flat. Finch hits a home run.

Diana Christensen (played by Faye Dunaway) is another type of character. Lumet told Dunaway that if she shows any vulnerability in the character, he would cut it out in the editing room. She is heartless and cutthroat but doesn't know any better. She was raised by television. Just watch the sex scene between her character and William Holden's character; the entire time she is discussing ratings, business, success. Chayefsky is showing that in her core "vulnerable," her core physical, she is a company woman. A sharp storytelling move. There are many more.

Cheers to the storytelling skills of Chayefsky and Lumet. Cheers to great characters.

Another interesting note: Lumet had the lighting style ramp from basic and realistic to dramatic and surreal throughout the film as the plot intensified.

Be well.

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