...in which I can't think of any introduction whatsoever. So...
It's been said before, but I'll say it again because I remain amazed: Network is an astoundingly prescient film, one that even borders on prophetic. I mean, get this: Network not only predicts the rise of both reality TV and the 24-hour news cycle at least a decade before either was a major cultural force, it also understands these future trends deeply enough to critique the exploitation that runs rampant in each creation. Even in 2014, Network is still a relevant, wicked-sharp media satire, which is incredible considering that the major targets of its satire didn't even exist in 1976 [1]. All that prescience wouldn't wouldn't be worth nearly as much, though, if the movie weren't also hilarious and fantastically acted, two characteristics that go hand-in-hand. Network won three of the four acting categories at the Academy Awards (Fay Dunaway, Peter Finch, and Beatrice Straight), and it probably should have won a fourth for William Holden's performance if that had been possible (Finch and Holden were both nominated in the same category, Best Actor). It's loud, showy acting through-and-though, but goshdarnit, it works. I can't stress enough how much the acting helps to turn what is really a bitter, caustic, ugly movie into one of the funniest comedies in American film history. Even so, Network is angry, shrill, and more than a little smug, and I can see how that did (and still does) turn people off—heck, I usually baulk against this sort of "television is the demise of civilization" tirade, because come on, there's a lot of great, intelligent, socially valuable TV out there, and that was true in the '70s, too [2]. And yet, for all the self-congratulatory airs of Network, there's still something pure about the righteous anger on display, pure enough that it sucks me in every time and reminds me that yes, this hatred of the disgusting reality of the media cycle is the reason why Network is one of my favorite movies ever.
For as long as The African Queen sat dormant on my Netflix queue, I had assumed that the film was a serious movie, the sort of straight-laced drama that tends to have Big Themes and attract Academy Awards, the kind of movie that's often kind of a bore to watch outside of the original cultural moment that birthed it. I'm not quite sure why I thought this (although its presence on both iterations of the AFI list surely bolstered this assumption of mine), and as it turns out, I was dead wrong. The African Queen is nuts. I mean, there's barely a serious bone in its cinematic body; to put it in perspective, I'm about to (sort of) discuss Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Raiders, with all its winking and exploding of heads, is only slightly sillier than The African Queen, as far as its prioritizing of swashbuckling over serious ideas (and realism) goes. No archaeologists-as-Errol-Flynn here, though; in The African Queen, the hero is clearly Katharine Hepburn's Rose Sayer, a Methodist missionary-turned-war-monger who, after her brother dies in the aftermath of a WWI-era German attack on their African village, becomes intent on turning the riverboat of friendly neighborhood captain Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) into a makeshift torpedo to blow the Germans' boat to kingdom come. Yeah, we're definitely not in the land of self-serious Hollywood. And that's not a criticism whatsoever. The African Queen is lots of fun, with both Hepburn and Bogart delivering charming performances. A welcome surprise of a film for me.
You know, sometimes it's kinda hard to write about my favorite movies. Like, I'm not talking about writing about movies I merely love—if anything, this series has shown that I can yammer on for hundreds of words on movies I love. I mean those movies that have been a part of my life since childhood, movies I internalized deeply before I even knew what film criticism was. Maybe I'm too close to these movies to consistently find analytical footholds. Or maybe they are movies that I've already read so much critical discourse about that I'm paralyzed by the possibility of repeating those critics. I dunno. All that is to say that I have embarrassingly little to say about Raiders of the Lost Ark, even though it's one of my favorite movies ever. What makes writing about Raiders especially difficult is that it's also one of those movies that has little or no interest in making any sort of real-world point outside the joys of cinema culture itself, which, to be clear, is one of my favorite types of movies, but it also means that discussions are limited to the the purely allusive and technical aspects of the film. "Oh, this is cool because it alludes to x movie from Lucas's childhood," "Spielberg's direction is effective because of its efficiency with space," and the like. Those are valid, important discussions to have, but they aren't always discussions I feel especially equipped to engage in, particularly in the case of Indiana Jones, when the allusions refer to a cinematic form (i.e. adventure serials) whose heyday predates my birth by half a century. So yeah. I'm sorry for the lame "discussion about discussions" thing. I love, love, love this movie so much, but beyond gushing that sentiment, I'm all hot air.
That's all for now, folks! Until next time.
You can read the previous post, #s 61-63, here.
Update: The next post, #s 67-69, can be found here.
1] What's arguably more incredible, though, is that TV media rose (sank?) to the challenge of Network's colossal cynicism by actually making the sort of dreck the film cautions against. In a way, we have nobody but TV itself to thank for the intelligence of Network's screenplay. If television had become some completely high-brow medium in the years since '76, I think it's possible that we'd now dismiss Network as self-satisfied paranoia.
2] That's not to say that there isn't tons of crap out there, too, but overall I tend to prefer my film critiques of television (a dubious genre if there ever was one) to follow the path of Good Night, and Good Luck: TV is a medium with a rich potential, and it's sad that people don't always take advantage of that potential.
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