Network

"We're mad as hell, and we're not gonna take it anymore!"

Oh, so that's where that line came from!

What an incredible, scary, prescient, bizarre film this is. I almost don't know what to say. When I read the description I thought it would compare to "Broadcast News," another of my all-time faves. It did start out like that (the end of unchoreographed old-fashioned news reporting on television). But then, "Network" spirals downward into surreal, almost science-fiction, very dark territory more closely resembling a film like "Naked Lunch" than "Broadcast News." No kidding. It seriously freaked me out. But it got its point across. Everyone should watch it.

I've been on a bit of a Faye Dunaway kick lately, having also watched "Three Days of the Condor" and "Chinatown" (for a second time, each) within the past month. She's really something in "Network," though; I think it beats those other two performances by a landslide. She's gorgeous, robotic, driven, heartless and completely believable. She's raving, while having sex (!), about network television series ideas such as "the Mao Tse-Tung hour" featuring acts of terrorism by radical left-wing militants. The moment when William Holden tells her he can still feel emotions, he's got to leave her, she's nothing but a humanoid? Unforgettable. It feels so, so...True. So much like everybody I see around me all the time. What has television done to us?