- I was glad to see Faye Dunaway's breasts,
which is saying something, given that her character
freely admitted she was a lousy lay and then she
demonstrated as much with Holden at the Sea Spray Inn. It
is a testament to her sexual power that she could be so
vacuous and tedious, yet so beguiling. I felt bad for the
young man kissing her shoulder when he received the sharp
"Knock it off."
Peter Finch needn't have died for his
Oscar. It was well-deserved.
If modern writers managed half of Paddy
Chayefsky's lines in Network, we'd be better off for it,
though I am heartened by recent black comedies such as
"Rushmore" and "Election."
The script bogs down a bit in the last
quarter, mainly, I think, because the medium of film does
not handle monologues for two hours, and in between
Chayefsky's smart dialogue, this is essentially a film of
well-delivered speeches.
I understand that Beatrice Strait won Best
Supporting Actress and it holds some record for least
amount of screen time. I thought she was quite good until
she became good-old buddy pal to Holden. I didn't really
understand what was going on there, nor did I really
understand what Holden was doing with Dunaway, given her
incessant jabbering, her lousy lay status, and their
plain incompatability. Perhaps it was Holden trying to
understand the future, or perhaps he was waning and
wanted a Chiquita, but the relationship seemed peculiar
and off-kilter. That said, some of Chayefsky's best lines
were during their conversations, so the curious nature of
the couple can be forgiven.
Anything involving the black woman from the
Ecumenical Liberation Organization was priceless (she should have
received Strait's Oscar for the afro alone); the contract-discussion
scene, the pitch scenes for the shows, and the control room's
blase attitude during Finch's first telecast ("Howard just
said he was going to kill himself") were also high points. This is a big movie with big ideas, but it
does not for one second allow its good intentions or its
important nature to obviate the need for brilliant dialogue and
trim performances. It is also prescient, a rarity in social
satire.
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