Sunday, July 14, 2013

A Prophetic Movie Worth Re-Watching

It’s been 37 years since Paddy Chayefsky’s movie Network premiered and won acting Oscars for Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch and Beatrice Straight and a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Chayefsky. Seeing the movie again after all these years, I’m inclined to say that William Holden should have won that Best Actor award (he was nominated too and was up against Finch), but since it was Finch’s last movie, I won’t begrudge him. He does after all make one hell of a crazy man who speaks the truth (see the clip below).

The movie is often considered a satire of the TV age, but Chayefsky and director Sidney Lumet said they were just reporting what was in fact happening to our culture. Indeed, they were prophetic in an almost frightening way. They predicted both “reality TV” and Fox News, and they certainly nailed the utterly corrupting influence of “The Tube.”

You can skip the ad below.


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