#1 NETWORK

NETWORK (1976)

Network, a caustic multiple Oscar contender, is frequently cited as the film that foresaw the rise of "junk TV." Despite being promoted as satire, it wasn't a laugh-out-loud spoof like Scary Movie but a severe and mature broadside that aimed to shock and upset instead. Given the 21st-century tube landscape of voyeuristic Reality programs, sleazy music-video channels, surprising news, and circus-freak daytime conversation, some of its specifics aren't even that far-fetched nowadays. Children who watch The Jerry Springer Show when they get home from school might be perplexed by all the excitement.

But Network, written by one of the greatest screenwriters of early TV drama, Paddy Chayefsky, boils with righteous rage and features particularly derogatory language. By the middle of the 1970s, he was dissatisfied with what he was witnessing, and the story is set in the post-Watergate era of the darkest cynicism, domestic terrorism, horrors committed in other countries, energy shortages, inflation, recession, amorality, and bad news all around. Almost every character, even minor ones, can deliver an angry monologue that might damage the wallpaper. This movie poses the question: Has TV improved or declined three decades later? The idea of massive, anything-for-money corporations controlling the media (and everything else) seems particularly on-target in Network, a situation that has only worsened since the 1970s.