Network (1976)

An astonishing film with one of the best scripts ever -- highly literate in its skewering of the nonliterate (visual) mass medium of television and amazingly prescient in foresaging Darwinian reality TV and more. Now, more than 30 years later, we have seen much of the sensationalistic and voyeuristic programming insanity come true as championed by the Jezebel played by Faye Dunaway. William Holden plays the news exec who stands for human values but falls inside her orbit of love, sex, and power. (She uses all three as her tools but she herself only understands the last one.) Robert Duvall is the network exec who paves her path to power. Peter Finch literally comes to see himself as a "modern-day prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of society" (believing his own hype and hyperventilating into hyperbole). This film has to be seen -- and more than once -- to be believed. I can't believe it took me this long to finally catch it. Here is a monumental film that speaks to the ages, warning us against our baser proclivities and the pursuit of the lowest common denominator in all its forms (political, economic, moral, and cultural). See it! Network will prove to be more chilling than Brazil, 1984, and V for Vendetta. 5 stars.