"Television will never be the same!" proclaimed the tagline-teaser of Sydney Lumet's 1976 masterwork Network.

In this simple exclamation a truth about movies and their relationship to the small screen becomes surprisingly clear. On the one hand Network's story of a fourth major network tempting good taste by showcasing a has-been newscaster as the madman of the airwaves is the hinge for spinning a significant, larger-than-life human drama.

On the other hand the movies have always had a strained relationship with television that allows a pedantic film to criticize its rival art and entertainment form in the pursuit of a significant, larger-than-life human drama. Written by Paddy Chayefsky, the noted screen and TV writer who won a previous Academy Award for Marty in 1955, Network is directly concerned with the omnipresence of bad taste and declining values seemingly brought on by television or, at the very least, promoted within its household frame. Satirizing the mid-'70s fascination with TV's built-in preferences for spectacle over insight, action over contemplation and commercial impact over art, Chayefsky's script is everywhere just to one side of being hopeless. That his version of television's corporate culture and the politics behind what we daily watch on our boob tubes remains not just eerily prescient but descriptive of our current moment is also a mark of his genius and the film's resulting greatness.

Knowing himself to be a contributor to the Golden Age of Television, Chayefsky's main gripe against the three network broadcasting system seems to be the loss of human value in their objectification of experience for commercial purposes. Such a tendency must have bothered him as he wrote Network and it must have really gotten his goat that much of the socially responsible aspects of television are easily put second to the bottom line instincts of corporate leaders looking for greater ad revenue and audience share. Necessarily this profit orientation applies to all genres and formats of TV programming and was, to Chayefsky's way of thinking, most obviously manifest in the decline of newscasts on network television.

Based on the premise of a changing corporate tide within the fictitious fourth major network, UBS, Network concerns a pair of wizened newsmen. Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is the aging news anchor and Max Schumacher (William Holden) is one of his cronies. When his sub-par ratings fail to improve, programming guru and upstart UBS corporate citizen, Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), fires Howard to freshen up the newsroom.

Unexpected in every way, Howard's rant on live television during his final telecast results in a ratings frenzy leading Diana to spin off his own show wherein he rails against the daily wrongs of life. Backed by her VP, Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), Diana turns Howard into the so-called prophet of the airwaves while Howard himself loses his tenuous grip on reality with each passing day.

Meanwhile Max and Diana begin an affair that ends abortively despite the intensity of feelings they share but can't adequately express. For her it's because she's a successful woman in a traditionally male-oriented personal and professional world. For him it's because he's married and caught in the bind of adultery but also in feeling morally remiss in a world where Howard's nightly rants catapult into stardom based on the value of lowest common denominator profanity and rage.

As Howard's hold on audiences gradually wanes, though, he's once again faced with low ratings. Thus his programmers face the dilemma of how to gracefully get rid of him. This time, however, the tides of change at UBS are in concert against Howard Beale and his cry of, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

Benefiting from a well positioned back story about terrorists and her own aggressiveness just then fortified by Max's rejection, Diana gets the green light from Frank to enact the most outlandish stunt the network has ever seen. One evening in the middle of his talk show-turned-sermon, an anarchic terrorist group assassinates Howard on live TV. Falling dead to the stage floor Howard fulfills the needs of his desensitized audience who require ever more striking streams of TV entertainment to keep them interested.

It's a critical and serious commendation of television and our habits to glom onto media events along with the grossest kinds of entertainment 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. It's also a remarkable achievement for the cinema in mounting this attack on its brethren although it doesn't seem entirely intended to judge the living room's window on the world too harshly. Instead Network's warning or moral, if the word is applicable, is to help us regard our tendency towards objectifying all experience, whether good or bad, to our own detriment and to the inevitable slide of our culture's more sacred values.

Network's indictment points out how the television and cinematic media manipulate their audiences, yes, but also how these audiences reflect themselves and urge on their manipulation. It's yet another catch-22 but Chayefsky's satire is nothing more than the extension of circumstances he was observing in 1976 that have only come to be the standards by which we know television and movies today.

We do indeed enjoy spectacles of punishment, pleasure, fear and laughter from the dramas we encourage and the live TV programming we tune in week after week. We do indeed dumb down our standards of what seems newsworthy and we seldom question the stream of news we receive about its version of absolute truth or the methods and purposes by which it's transmitted to us. We do indeed set aside our values of good and bad when watching movies and television and we step away from our centers of judgment willingly and because the tools of entertainment pepper our daily lives as surely as our clothes cover our backs.

Most importantly, television is a business capitalized on a medium of communication, art and entertainment that has only become more commercially driven since Network was first released. This money motive, while always the centerpiece of any for-profit venture, is equally its own end with programming that urges our basest interests and rewards them with the most easily, cheaply and quickly produced shows possible.

Thus we watch TV talk shows featuring people we would never invite into our home. We watch sports events as if they were more important than the affairs of state. We watch national and international conflicts, battles and wars through the nose cameras of descending missiles and we think of the whole experience in terms of whether or not it was "cool." And we let the stream of TV deluge our lives, assaulting us with advertisements for products we don't need, ideas we disagree with but feel helpless to resist and the loss of time we need for other pursuits but gladly give up in pursuit of fun.

Not all of these sentiments are directly addressed in Network. Still, all of them can be inferred through its trail of TV personalities, executives and hangers-on who enliven the proceedings with smart acting, smart writing, smart directing and an engaging social commentary.

Look especially for Ned Beatty's breathtaking role as UBS board chairman Arthur Jensen in his single scene near-monologue where he bowls Howard over with an evangelical vision of his purpose in the world. Then there are the wonderful exchanges between Max and Diana and the sheer, nearly inhuman quality of Frank Hackett that once again affirms the brilliance of Robert Duvall as one of our American treasures. Throughout the proceedings Owen Roizman's cinematography reflects a TV aesthetic despite his widescreen format that further lets the small screen mentality influence the production design, costumes and acting styles of the cast.

Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists after the near collapse of both studios during the late '60s and early '70s, Network was a bonnet in the two studios' hats. Even though Henry Fonda reportedly turned down the role of Howard Beale because it was simply too crazy for his taste, audiences embraced the film. In so doing the public re-confirmed connections with an aging William Holden, a blossoming Faye Dunaway, ever supportive Robert Duvall and a deceased Peter Finch who died between the end of Network's principal photography and eventual release. Perhaps as a result Finch won the Oscar and Golden Globe for best actor that served as capstones to his remarkable performance and career that was cut short too soon.

Though Network itself was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, it lost Oscars' top prize to Rocky. Not alone among masterworks very seriously upstaged by a more popular and less complex film, Taxi Driver was also defeated in its bid for Best Picture. But then again such fine genre work as Carrie and The Outlaw Josey Wales failed even to be nominated making Network's slight at the hands of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences relatively slight in hindsight. Such an assessment must also be balanced against other laurels offered the film, perhaps most notably its induction into the National Film Registry in 2000 also previously extended to Taxi Driver in 1994, although it remains to be seen if Rocky will be so honored.