Network - "Aaj Tak - 50 years back!"

 Network - Drama, 120 mins, Prime Video

There are a few movies which i have on my watch list for years now - waiting for them to pop up on some streaming platform/medium - Finally a random Justwatch search told me that this multiple oscar winning movie directed by the great Sidney Lumet - is available now.

The stunning movie is an account of how the ratings drive the News (and then its not news anymore! - familiar isnt it?). The story starts with Howard Beale (Peter Finch) a very successful news anchor, on his last legs, knows that he is going to be out - makes an outrageous claim in his show that he would be killing himself on live TV the following week!

What starts of as a potential sacking and cleanup by his boss and friend of many years Max Schumacher (William Holden) - becomes leverage for  Diana (Faye Dunaway) and the super boss Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall). How they tap into this situation and eventually turning it around as a premise for a record breaking show is the basic premise.

The acting is absolutely stunning - i cannot even imagine the pages of dialogue that Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway let out breathlessly in single take sequences. You thought that Robert Duvall was just Tom Hagen (The Godfather) - think again - He is absolutely outstanding as the ambitious and driven super boss. William Holden is smooth and all class - swinging between charisma and "chad".  

The only sore point for me was the romance between Diana and Max - but that probably just brings to fore Diana's single minded ambition to succeed. That apart, the monologues sequences by Peter Finch and the breakneck pace at which the movie runs, with all the punchy dialogue - this movie is OUTSTANDING

Trivia - 

When i did a little more research on the movie - This was one of the rare movies which has Oscar wins for all the main categories - Three acting awards along with Best Screenplay. It lost best picture and best director to the greatest underdog movie of all time "Rocky".

Peter Finch (who played Howard Beale) won best actor - William Holden was also nominated. Peter Finch died before the awards were held, becoming the first actor to win an Oscar posthumously. The second actor to win an acting award was Heath Ledger (for The Dark Knight) - Both Finch and Ledger were Australians by birth!