Film / News
We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take this anymore!
It’s a topsy-turvy world in which the President of the USA imagines that he can magic away all criticism with the simple mantra: “Fake news!” Meanwhile, trust in mainstream news outlets has plummeted to such an extent that alarming numbers of people rely on those helpful swivel-eyed folks in tinfoil hats infesting social media to tell them what’s going on. How did we get here? Let’s see what the movies can teach us. Turns out they’re been quite prescient.
The Watershed’s timely Manipulating the Message season kicks off on July 27 with Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning 1976 satire Network, which brilliantly nails cynical ratings-chasing TV news and anticipates the inarticulate rage that led to Brexit and Trump as summarised by Peter Finch’s memorable line: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Finch plays veteran network news anchor Howard Beale, who learns that declining ratings mean his services will no longer be required. So during his next broadcast, he announces that he’ll commit suicide live on air the following week. Naturally, ratings go through the roof and amoral programming executive Diana Christiansen (Faye Dunaway) milks the increasingly deranged and messianic Beale for all he’s worth. This one’s introduced by journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed.
The season reminds us that there have been plenty of other gems taking a decidedly jaundiced view of print and broadcast journalism. Gus Van Sant’s To Die For boasts a career-best performance from Nicole Kidman as a ruthlessly ambitious yet wholly vacant aspiring TV news celebrity, who is at once frighteningly plausible and strangely familiar.
is needed now More than ever
Billy Wilder’s extraordinarily dark Ace in the Hole stars Kirk Douglas as drunken, self-centred, down-on-his-luck, hard-bitten hack Charles Tatum, who will stop at nothing to re-establish his reputation with a scoop. He finds one in rural Albuquerque when local man Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) becomes trapped in a collapsed cave while seeking Indian artefacts. Tatum promptly swings into action, manipulating all around him as he prolongs Minosa’s agony with obfuscation and bare-faced lies to spin the story out as he ensures national coverage. Without giving too much away, Wilder avoids the cop-out feelgood ending you fear may be looming in the last reel. This one was his first commercial and critical flop. Back in 1951, audiences weren’t quite ready for such a forthright assault on newspaper ethics. Amusingly, reviewers also found it hard to believe that a reporter could be so lacking in scruples.
Also something of a flop on release but now justly acclaimed is Ealing director Alexander Mackendrick’s atypical Hollywood debut, Sweet Smell of Success: a splendidly perverse film noir with Tony Curtis as a gossip-hustling press agent under the thumb of a vicious Broadway newspaper columnist (Burt Lancaster). And what media movie season would be complete without a screening of the Orson Welles classic, Citizen Kane?
Manipulating the Message forms part of the second annual Cinema Rediscovered weekend from July 27-30, which showcases some of the finest digital restorations from around the world. The full programme is due to be revealed soon (watch this space), but already announced as part of Manipulating the Message is the UK premiere of the recent 4K restoration of the very first screen adaptation of The Front Page. Hecht and MacArthur’s fast-talking newspaper world Broadway hit has been adapted for the screen many times (His Girl Friday, Broadcast News, etc). But it was All Quiet on the Western Front director Lewis Milestone who got in first, having been recruited by none other than Howard Hughes to direct this 1931 adaptation. It’s a tad stilted, but as a pre-Hays Code film it got away with plenty of rudeness that the censor would later snip.
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