1976: Network

It has sometimes been said that Sidney Lumet's 1976 satire about a the inner workings of a struggling TV channel doesn't work as well as it used to anymore because by now actual TV has surpassed the satire. That's a fair point. If you compare, for example, the offerings of this muppet. . .



. . . with Network's fictional shows by Howard Beale, it is not clear which is the satire. However, there may be an entirely different aspect of current TV that takes away much more from today's experience of Network, namely that the idea to present interconnected lives of people who work together, and set much of what happens at the workplace, as Network does, is by now a standard strategy of many TV series.

Even so, a very well-done film definitely worth watching. Very weird cinematography, too, as though they'd drenched the celluloid in beige. (7.5)