1976 dramaRating: 14/20
Plot: Executives at UBC, a struggling fourth television network, watch in disgust as their ratings continue to dive. They fire their veteran news anchor Howard Beale who counters by telling his television-viewing audience that he is going to kill himself on air. Faye Dunaway, programming director, realizes that there's an audience for crazy old guys who curse on live television and the network gives him a "prophet of doom" show during which he can ramble to the masses.
Positively prophetic. The parts of this that are gritty and almost documentary-like are very good. There's a realism and flow that make it work. Then there are the other parts where this is just like a movie. There are unnecessary subplots including an affair between Dunaway and William Holden's characters, and too many scenes that seemed designed just to give the actors an excuse to act their butts off and win Academy Awards. This holds up fairly well today, mostly because of its prescient ideas about television in America, despite the name-dropping of 70s television series and icons. It just seemed overlong, overwritten, clunky, very cynical, and too sure of itself to really really like.
Something about Faye Dunaway rubs me the wrong way:
I think one's enjoyment of this movie is tied to their tolerance for talk. This might be the most talky movie ever but I have always loved it. Chayesky's script is brilliant from beginning to end and this film was amazingly prescient and cynical. Finch, Beatty, Holden, Duvall and Dunaway are all at their scene-chewing best (although just the thought of 200 year-old Holden and Dunaway doing the naughty makes me deduct a point). I agree with what you say but I give this a 19 because I love what it has to say. It is an amazing tour-de-force of words and ideas.
ReplyDeleteI meant Chayefsky of course. In another I blew memorable, and spelled Rubik's with a c. Pooh.
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