Network

"When Chayefsky created Howard Beale, could he have imagined Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and the World Wrestling Federation?" – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Likely, Lumet's best known work and arguably his greatest achievement. Upon learning that he's to be fired due to his station's declining popularity, an iconic evening anchor's sudden transformation into a ranting demagogue turns the station into a carnival of angry populism, and, of course, sky-high ratings. As a critique of the news media and an expression of political discontent, there are few films that resonate with our own historical moment more presciently than Network. The film earned Oscars for scriptwriter Paddy Chayefsky (whose screenplay was named one of the ten all-time best by the Writer's Guild of America, East in 2002) and actors Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight, working alongside an ensemble cast featuring Robert Duvall, William Holden and Ned Beatty.

For a half-a-century he made some of your favorite American movies. For Sidney Lumet, the work was the thing and his craft, self-effacing. Though his films earned a combined total of 46 Oscar nominations, it was not until he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar - for his "brilliant service to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture" six years before his death in 2005 that the coveted statuette eluded him. With the revealing self-portrait, By Sidney Lumet, and seven of his most beloved films, CGAC pays long overdue tribute to an American master and his classics.

Check out the rest of our At Long Last Lumet program!