Network
By Kit Macdonald
“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”
This line, shouted in the midst of a fevered on-air breakdown by a news anchor driven to the brink of madness by low ratings and his impending firing, has passed into movie lore: the number of people in the world who recognise it is undoubtedly a high multiple of those who have actually seen the film it comes from. Seeing the film it comes from is a very good idea, however, and anyone looking for a double hit of biting satire on the mass-market television industry can get it by also catching Late Night With The Devil at Phenomena (https://miniguide.co/event/late-night-with-the-devil) on June 14th, 16th or 18th.
The great British-American actor Peter Finch plays Howard Beale, the anguished news anchor who announces he will kill himself on air in one week in protest against his predicament. His meltdown turns him into an unlikely sensation and ratings smash, and network executives duly exploit him mercilessly for profit. The sad postscript to Network is that Finch died just a few months after it came out: the Academy Award for Best Actor he earned for it made him the first performer to be awarded an Oscar posthumously.