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Remember This Scene?: 'Network'

Jeremy Fuster |
October 15, 2013 | 3:23 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen, in the scene from "Network" that transforms a billionaire into a god (MGM).
Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen, in the scene from "Network" that transforms a billionaire into a god (MGM).

Every Tuesday, Jeremy Fuster analyzes a critical scene from a popular film. Join him every week as he delves into what exactly makes these critical scenes so memorable and successful.

Full disclosure: This is my favorite film of all time. 

Today's column focuses on "Network," the measuring stick to which all satirical films are held against. I first saw this film in 2009, at the height of the federal bailout debates and the Glenn Beck hysteria. I was 17 years old and a writer for my high school newspaper. I was interested in a journalism career and was trying to understand exactly what kind of state the profession I was trying to enter was truly in. 

Then I saw Howard Beale transform from mild-mannered news anchor to a broken, raving old man. I saw how he tried to warn the nation of the circus television had become and how it could no longer be relied on as the truth, yet at the same time becoming a network cash cow on a show steeped in sensationalism and yellow journalism. This film came out in 1976, yet it says so much about the current world of national broadcast news it was as if Paddy Chayefsky had a TARDIS in his garage and wrote this film as a prophetic warning of what he saw during his time traveling.

I could pick any of the incredible monologues Peter Finch delivers as Beale and talk about how it secured him a posthumous Best Actor Oscar (he died two months he won). I could talk about Beatrice Straight's five minutes and forty seconds of screen time and how she parlayed it into an Oscar of her own. I could talk more about my crazy "Paddy's Got A TARDIS" theory. Instead, let's take a look at the scene in which Howard Beale is broken by  Arthur Jensen, the chairman of the conglomerate that owns Beale's network. 

After profiting for months from Beale's rants, the network executives are now realizing that the monster they have created is destroying the laboratory, Frankenstein-style. Beale has called for the viewers to demand the White House to stop the network and the conglomerate from being sold to a Saudi Arabian organization. In response, Jensen brings Beale to his boardroom, where he makes a booming speech about how Beale has sent the company into ruin by stopping a deal necessary to save it from debt overload. 

First off…this speech is prescient. Jensen's declaration that the world is a business feels like something that belonged in the bailout debate. Jensen shows Beale how the global economy is the true lifeblood of modern society, using words like "subatomic" and "galactic" to emphasize how far that system's influence reaches. Replace IBM, AT&T, and Exxon with Apple, Citigroup, and BP, and this speech is ready for the age of Obama. 

But the power of Jensen's words isn't just expressed through Ned Beatty's acting or Chayefsky's word choice. It's also expressed through Sidney Lumet's direction. When Beale is first brought in to the boardroom that Jensen calls "Valhalla," we get wide shots of the luxurious room that embodies the power that Beale has fought so hard against. Then Jensen dims the lights and begins his speech. As he roars at Beale, the camera jumps between a close-up of the shocked, dimly-lit face of Beale and the bright, enraged visage of Jensen, who is framed from Beale's perspective. Jensen is at the far end of the room, the lamps accentuating the distance between the two men and making the chairman seem powerful and unreachable. 

As Jensen tones down his rhetoric, going from bad cop to good cop, the camera zooms in closer on him, making him seem less threatening. Finally, Jensen moves out of the bright spotlight and walks back to Beale, his voice as quiet as possible without whispering. His face is shrouded in darkness, barely visible, as he asks Beale to turn away from populism and "preach his evangel." In response, Beale proclaims that he has "seen the face of God," and suddenly the aim of this entire scene has been revealed. If the boardroom is Valhalla, then Jensen is Odin, exploiting Beale's deluded state of mind to push him in a direction that will lead to his unexpected demise. The camera framing and lighting choices put us right in Beale's position. We see Jensen as he sees him, and he becomes just as vast and immane as the economy he describes. 

And even if Jensen isn't really a god, he definitely embodies the phrase that has become synonymous with Wall Street: "too big to fail."

 

Find other "Remember This Scene?" posts here. Next week: Jeremy's pick for the greatest Bond girl ever.

Reach Jeremy Fuster here. Follow him on Twitter here.

 



 

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