Amazon.com essential video: Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But while Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of "reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, it's every bit as potent now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about the ratings frenzy at the cost of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight (who each won Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low ratings. His character's response is to announce he'll kill himself on live television two weeks hence. What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman's descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity. Dunaway plays the frigid, ratings-obsessed producer who pursues success with cold-blooded zeal; Holden is the married executive who tries to thaw her out during his own seething midlife crisis. Through it all, Chayefsky (via Finch) urges the viewer to repeat the now-famous mantra "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" to reclaim our humanity from the medium that threatens to steal it away. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Great!
Not only is this a great dvd, but the delivery was prompt and the dvd was in new condition. I am very happy with this product. I will surely order from this seller again.
Rating: - A true classic -- must see
For any of you who have never seen this movie, and you want to see a movie with an unusual story, this is a good one. It is timeless in expressing how fed up people can get with things around them, and whether they can make a splash in this world as they travel through...
I saw this movie 30 years ago but never forgot it. It was definitely worth rewatching. It amazes me how movies like this get overlooked in the television channel reruns....
Rating: - More relevant than ever
The movie is a prophetic masterpiece. Look around you. Here we are at the height of the information age. Innudated with pseudo reality shows. Biased media spin doctors creating political super-stars and even getting a unqualified junior senator elected President of the US. Might as well been written by Chayesky himself.
As mentioned in an earlier review the digital transfer leads much to be desired. But the films message is so important, even now 30 years later, that you should buy it anyway.
Rating: - Television should be able to kill without bulletts
It could have been a great film. It had all it needed to be a masterpiece. It debunked the old traditional boring television of our great grand parents, that television that was speaking all the time in order to bring us the truth, to teach us the true truth, to make us believe every word they said was absolutely inspiring and we had to be thankful and grateful for this new medium to be so effective in teaching us, in lifting us out of our ignorance. They treated television as a super book, an encyclopedia and they had not understood the slightest smallest element of what this medium was. They ... Read More
Rating: - Network DVD
The DVD was perfect, but the space that holds the DVD was broken. It didn't scratch it, but I can't put the disc back in the thing. A +++++ on the amount of time it took to get to me!
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