Rent Network (1976)

Big reputation but badly dated. - Network review by Promessi

Network won four Oscars, was highly successful and much fêted by the critics back in the seventies. Surprisingly it has held its high reputation-- if guides and polls are to be believed. But the years have not been kind to this film. The core of the film is internal politics in big business. Now, this may have been groundbreaking in 1976 but since the nineties we have become accustomed to great movies that handle the subject more proficiently -- think Michael Douglas. Then there's the "Joan of Arc problem" by which I mean the great difficulty in giving the Messianic figure text which will convince the audience that the world would sit up and take notice. Frankly the script, despite all the plaudits it received, is not very good. Because the writers could not deliver a Mark Anthony climax to the demagogue's speeches they resorted to having Finch faint. This gave him all the conviction of a narcoleptic puppy. Then there were the sub-plots :The Ecumenical Liberation Front was sub-Monty Python, and not so much funny as laughable; the eternal triangle involving Dunaway, Holden (too old for a part repeatedly described as middle-aged) and H's wife was trite ,inconsequential. At best this film is an interesting period piece.

Inter-Network - Network review by AM

Hmmm, what a queer one! Starts off very strong and with some laugh out loud moments too. But tailed off a bit in the middle and I wasn't sure where it was going by the time we got to the end. It's a bit heavy-handed with the satire at times, and the whole side-plot of the "Mao Tse-Tung Hour" left me a bit cold as to the point of it, but I guess all leading in one direction. Faye Dunaway is superb in this - as is William Holden (I'd have given him the Best Actor Oscar to go along with Dunaway's, rather than Finch). But it feels as though just as it was getting up to speed it sort of petered out and lost direction.

Still - for a scathing satire on corporate America and the TV network system, go no further!

Where are these Bananas going?!!

A must see - Network review by MP

TERRIFIC. A real acting treat.

It Is as relevant today as when it was first released in 1976. Just shows how nothing ever really changes.

Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and William Holden give excellent performances, but it is Peter Finch who steals the show.

SUPERB

Not as clever as it thinks - Network review by JJ

This witty, urbane, literate drama, of a wordy kind that wouldn't get made now, still has at its apparently subversive heart a profoundly reactionary view; the beautiful, smart, ambitious and talented Faye Dunaway must above all be punished for failing to abandon her career and throw in her lot with her father-figure/lover (William Holden). I was surpised to see Holden was only 23 years older than Dunaway, he seems much older. Anyway, that part of it's a load of old nonsense.

The rest is a stellar satire on TV, the coming age of trash media and trash media people, now infesting every aspect of public discourse. So it's 3*: 1* for the crappy old Hollywood patriarchal stuff and 5* for showing what was just around the corner in the mid-1970s, if you had the ability to see it.