I thought that this ruined an otherwise brilliant movie. The dramatic tone of it was at odds with the satirical feel of the rest of the film. Are we supposed to care about the affair of a man who just left his wife? Maybe I'm missing something.
Suggestions please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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"truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce"-William Blake
I recall Faye Dunaway on her episode of "Inside The Actors Studio" about 15 years ago revealing that she asked Paddy Chayefsky why Diana was written as a woman, as this choice was not inherent to the basic plot.
His answer was that he made the character female because he felt that this piece needed a love story in order to make it more relatable...about actual humans rather than entirely about esoteric ideas and moralism.
In a way, I think that having Max Shumacher enter into an illicit affair humanized him a bit by giving him a big characher flaw...otherwise he might have come off as being too "sanctified."
Even at that, we were (to some degree) able to empathize with his "last stand" against the onset of old age that his affair with Diana represented.
Emoticons are for people who haven't learned to express themselves with actual words.
Then I think that Paddy Chayefsky didn't have the courage of his convictions. It clearly is mostly a film about esoteric ideas and moralism, and it seems that he got scared and inserted a romantic subplot awkwardly into it, so that people could 'relate' to it. It strikes me as a mistake, seeing as most people cherish the film for its esoteric ideas and moralism, not the Faye Dunaway-william Holden romance
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"truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce"-William Blake
I agree with you 100%. I also think what the writer feared would push people's attention away is actually the very core of the story, what made the film stand out, and he should have just focused on that, instead of trying to please the viewer with a "love story" which is unnecessary and out of place.
shareI think it's simpler than all that.
Selling a script has always been hard, and I have this feeling that his pitch suffered from some of the themes of his film.
The vast majority of screenplays in the most general sense have some kind of 'love plot' in there to a degree, purely for the sake of human interest and relatability. But I don't think it was written for that, I think it was written to sell it to people who thought those aspects would help it sell to more people.
...I hope that makes sense.
If that's the case, then in some ways, you could say it adds to the satire of the whole thing, haha.
http://www.haydenpurcell.com
It makes perfectly sense. I agree with what you say, and actually that doesn't really differ that much with what I previously stated. The only difference is that you seem to find that alright (or at least you don't seem to have a big problem with it) while I thought that it ruined the whole picture for me.
share[deleted]
It clearly is mostly a film about esoteric ideas and moralism
seeing as [sic] most people cherish the film for its esoteric ideas and moralism
He looks two seconds away from the geriatric home yet he's at the onset of old age?
share[deleted]
Well, at least with another character getting that intimate with Dunaway, we get further into the Diana character than if we just saw her at work. If we just saw her in the office and not in her personal life, we wouldn't really grasp that her personal life is sooooooooooooo empty and sterile.
Also, the William Hoilden character isn't really THAT interesting on his own...so if he had even less territory to cover, he'd be really really blank and one-note.
I felt that it was to show that even the best of us can be enchanted by someone, or something, that is completely ruthless and self-interested, if it is packaged attractively. It was a metaphor of how TV manipulates us into getting what it wants.
share"It was a metaphor of how TV manipulates us into getting what it wants."
Bingo, right on the money. The "romance" was not simply added in, it actually is an integral part of the theme.
I think the Max-Diana relationship is meant to be a metaphor for what passes as television entertainment.
I can't say it was a two way metaphor for television entertainment. The metaphor was focused on Diana's attitude being formed from growing up with television. Diana had been desensitised by television to such an extent that she was incapable of real emotion.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
I agree. The romance was important, and casting one of the bad characters as a woman was unusual and and courageous at the time. Holden was seduced by her, just as we are seduced by exciting, shlock tv and popularity, rather than content and quality. Dunaway was an important character as the representative of everything corrupting and destructive about seeking ratings rather than quality - casting a woman in that role was unusual and a good move that dovetailed nicely with the romance/seduction of Holden's integrity and human warmth.
My real name is Jeff
Well said. It's the scene of Holden leaving his wife that doesn't quite fit IMO.
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My top 250: http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250
A great point. Yes, Diane is a metaphor of tv at its worst: attractively packaged emptiness and manipulation.
shareI believe most romantic subplots are worthless, slowing down the plot and wasting time. But it's still Holden & Dunaway, a powerhouse box office draw. The pairing probably pulled in a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't watch a self-reflecting morality tale.
sharei see your point, but if this romance had not occurred, then we wouldn't have that brilliant response by max's wife when he told her of the affair and later max's equally brilliant words to diana when he left her. those two sections of dialogue were incredible and masterful writing about human emotions......
of more importance, however, is if the romance had not occurred, then diana would possibly have not been exposed as a cold, insensitive, less-than-human being outside the confines of her work which adds to the whole theme of the movie.
Yeah, I think it really showed just how cold and emotionally detached Diana was...and how Max came to the realization that he had mistaken infatuation for love and had hurt those who really loved him in the process. That all set in on him when he and Diana started to live together and I think he realized, too, just how much his friend Howard was being used by these same type of people.
sharethe cold claim i translate to: she can't be easily manipulated. i'm sure her body temp was normal.
We're not soldiers and he's not the enemy. He's a pizza man.
But although that scene when he left her was brilliant on its own, it doesn't really fit in this film. I did like the affair subplot otherwise though.
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My top 250: http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250
I would respectfully disagree.
As others here have suggested, I think this subplot fleshes out Diana's character in that we see the dramatic contrast between her work and personal life. It also give us those two great scenes with great dialogue, the ones PlatinumScreen points out.
Finally, I think the Max-Diana relationship is meant to be a metaphor for what passes as television entertainment. It's all about the pleasure of the moment and looking fabulous, but with no substance, value or real emotion. By rejecting Diana and going back to his wife, Max is rejecting all that television has become. His final words as he leaves even reference the eternal mindless churning of television entertainment: "And here are some scenes from next week's show."
Network is one of my favorite movies: masterful acting, masterful writing.
I agree with dlade-1.
It fits into the theme of the movie.
The only thing was that Faye Dunaway shrieks so much that it is hard on the nerves. LOL. Really.
Diana was kind of a fake person. She was a nutcase at times. Then ,she was also cold.
I thought that it contributed to the movie's brilliance. Both writer and director were able to inject what appears to be a standard romantic subplot into the narrative and weave it as part of the moral fabric that was being deteriorated by commercial television jungle it was portraying.
(¯`i´¯)´·¸.)‹^›
I thought the romantic subplot was what made the movie, by showing us that behind Diana's enthusiasm for her job, she was a truly cold person, incapable of love and sentimentality. Her enthusiasm for the murder conspiracy would have come completely out of left field if not for us (and Diana) realizing the truth of Max's exit speech in the previous scene.
And speaking of Max's exit speech, wow! Probably the most scathing breakup speech I've ever seen. I loved how her vitriolic commentary on his lovemaking abilities don't phase him, because he knows that it comes from a position of petty anger. His docile rebuttal, coming from a position of love, hurts her so badly because she knows he's right, and realizes just how isolated she really is.
Had the romantic subplot spent any significant time on romance, I might agree that it would be out of place. But as it was, it was a chance to interject some actual truth and human emotion, juxtaposed against the cold world of ratings, ravings, and corporate politics.
Also, there are real "relationships" like that, in real life, all the time. Older man, younger woman...rather hating each other in their daily business roles, but drawn together by other "human frailties" (perhaps daddy issues for her; trying to recapture youth for him.)
The movie has a certain maturity in Holden's wife warning him "you're in for a lot of pain." Even as she IS in pain(being told of the affair and upcoming relationship), the wife can see the train wreck of this affair's end long before Holden does. Again, I am aware -- in real life, among friends and relatives -- of marriages where the man was "allowed" go to have an affair in the knowledge on the wife's part, that it would break up and he'd come back to the wife more docile than ever. Same with a husband letting a wife go on a affair.
I return after a few months, and after watching Network again, to agree that the Holden/Dunaway romance...at least in its final "end of the affair" scenes, is the weakest part of Network. One senses Paddy Chayefsky losing control of his vaunted "way with words."
Its like this: its pretty clear that Dunaway is cold and soulless and lives only for her TV career. As she tells Holden early on "I'm lousy at everything(including sex) but my job." And it is pretty clear that Holden is meant to be the middle-aged male hero of Network(Paddy's true mouthpiece), railing against both the corporate madness and human madness all around him.
But when Holden "tells off" Dunaway in one of those trademark speeches at the end("You are television incarnate") to me it comes off as a bitter middle-aged failure of man telling off the younger generation by using a very snobbish speech, that basically says "I'm better than you, I was always better than you, my generation is better than yours, and now I will win and you will lose" as he heads out the door. When, leaving for good and going out the door, Holden says "And now, a scene from next week's show," its kind of funny, but kind of obvious. And kind of self-righteous and snobby.
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What's funny is, I'm in love with all the OTHER speeches in Network: all of Finch's, most of Holden's, all of Dunaway's, the "one offs" for Beatty and Duvall.
Hey, wait a minute...I have a little trouble with Beatrice Straight's speech , too. And she won an Oscar for it(Beatty should have won for his, too,dammit, but no.)
For Beatrice Straight and Holden, too, seem to get caught up in the gears of Paddy Chayefsky's middle-aged rage. Straight is his self-knowing mouthpiece, here, too: at heart, Holden is like every other middle aged man who drops wife number one for wife -- or lover -- number two. The scene takes a pretty banal fact of life and tries to "pump it up." But Holden IS being a bum to his wife, no way around it -- and her raging attack on him is sort of wasted time and effort. Yeah, he will come back, too. So...again...a waste.
By the way, I can't remember in which scene, or with who (Dunaway? Straight?) Holden offers the line: "I have primal fears!" but I think that's overwritten, too.
I'd say that the problem is that Paddy can write political, satirical and philosophical speeches with great fervor, but he had trouble writing human relationships. But wait -- he wrote Marty, which is GREAT on human relationships. I just guess the writing failed him here. And -- given free reign and "final cut" of his dialogue" in Network -- Paddy could give us his best writing and his worst writing in the same movie.
PS. In his Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1971 movie "The Hospital," one movie before "Network" Paddy has middle-aged literally impotent rager Doctor George C. Scott rage to -- and have curative sex with -- much younger sexpot Diana Rigg.
I guess it was a thing with him.