A movie review written by: Lee Sonogan

2hr1min (1976) Drama

Narrator: This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.

The Network is a Movie that is as current as it was back in 1976. This movie is about mob mentality and how the media can exploit even the best intentions for mutual profit. I do not rate seventies movie match but this one is worthy of reviewing. Director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky said that the film was not meant to be a satire but a reflection of what was happening back then.

IMDB.com describes this story as a television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor’s ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit. Peter Finch who played the anchor Howard Beale may be the most memorable from his infamous monologue in it but many other actors out through each scene created interesting acting performances from the start, the middle and the conclusion.

As of right now many movies or television shows have gotten some influence from this movie. Having a cult following, to this day this movie is still highly regarded because of the hypocrisy of modern life. I highly recommend this movie to people who understand the type of satire this story portrays and just enjoy pure drama films.

Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU, WILL, ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. 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. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that… perfect world… in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

8/10

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