"Οι Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch και Robert Duvall πρωταγωνιστούν σε αυτό το συγκλονιστικό πορτραίτο τηλεοπτικής εκμετάλλευσης. Όταν ο παρουσιαστής ειδήσεων Howard Beale (Finch) πληροφορείται το γεγονός της απόλυσής του μετά από χρόνια συνεργασίας με το κανάλι, ξεσπά βίαια χωρίς να υπολογίζει πως είναι «στον αέρα». Βλέποντας τα νούμερα της τηλεθέασης να εκτινάζονται εξαιτίας του απρόσμενου αυτού γεγονότος, οι υπεύθυνοι του καναλιού προσλαμβάνουν ξανά τον Howard, ονομάζοντάς τον "τρελό προφήτη των media". Όταν όμως ο «προφήτης» σταματήσει να είναι «επικερδής», τα πράγματα θα αλλάξουν."
Δράμα σε σκηνοθεσία Sidney Lumet (" Serpico", "Murder on the Orient Express", "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead") και σενάριο Paddy Chayefsky ("The Hospital").
Αν και κυκλοφόρησε το 1976, το "Network" παραμένει επίκαιρο όσο ποτέ, καυτηριάζοντας το βρώμικο κόσμο πίσω απο τις ιδιοκτησίες των μεγάλων τηλεοπτικών δικτύων που χρησιμοποιούν τον τηλεοπτικό αέρα μόνο και μόνο για την εξυπηρέτηση των σκοτεινών σχεδίων τους.
Με εντυπωσιακό cast "βαρεών βαρών" που περιλαμβάνει τους Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall και ευθείες βολές κατά του σκοτεινού κόσμου της τηλεόρασεις, το "Network" αποτελεί ένα απο τα διαχρονικότερα "διαμάντια" του Hollywood.
Οι εξαιρετικές ερμηνείες χάρισαν στην ταινία 3 Oscars (Α' Ανδρικού ρόλου - Peter Finch / Α' Γυναικείου ρόλου - Faye Dunaway / Β' Γυναικείου ρόλου - Beatrice Straight) ενώ η ταινία απέσπασε και το Oscar σεναρίου (Paddy Chayefsky).
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" (Howard Beale)
Σκηνοθεσία: Sidney Lumet
Σενάριο: Paddy Chayefsky (νουβέλα)
Πρωταγωνιστούν: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Beatrice Straight, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, Conchata Ferrell, Arthur Burghardt, Bill Burrows.
Διάρκεια: 121 λεπτά
Ετος: 1976
Δείτε το trailer:
Ο επικός και προφητικός λόγος του Howard Beale:
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write.
I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!
Note: the bolded line is ranked #19 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.All human beings are becoming humanoids. All over the world, not just in America. We're just getting there faster since we're the most advanced country.
We're delusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds – we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion!
Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation; this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers; this tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people, and that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died. Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communications Corporation of America; there's a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor. And when the 12th largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network?
Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, a football players. We're in the boredom-killing business.
Last night, I got up here and asked you people to fight for your heritage and you did and it was beautiful. Six million telegrams were received from the White House! The Arab takeover of CCA has been stopped! The people spoke! The people won! It was a radiant eruption of democracy! But, I think that was it fellas. That sort of thing is not likely to happen again, because at the bottom of all our terrified souls we know that democracy is a dying giant; a sick, sick, dying, decaying political concept riding in it's final pain. I don't mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, most powerful, most advance country in the world, light years ahead of any country, and I don't mean the communists are going to take over the world because the communists are deader than we are.
What is finished, is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourish of every individual in it; it's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished; it's every single one of you out there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals, it's a nation of two-hundred some-odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-that-white steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings, and as replaceable as piston rods.
