Network

I re-watched Network for the first time in several years, having only seen it once before. I still thoroughly enjoyed it and love how after 40+ years it is even more relevant in today's world. This go around I was most taken with Beatrice Straight as Max Schumacher's wife, Louise. (She was the lovely redhead parapsychologist in Poltergeist!) As far as I'm concerned, she absolutely stole the show. Her husband, played by William Holden, says that he is in love with another woman, but ultimately feels in the end he will leave this woman, when it fails, and come back to their marriage. In her composed rage (you'll never see it done better) she shouts at him after 25 years of marriage, "I'm your wife, damn it! And if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance!" The camera flicks to Bill Holden's face and it was the face of a man listening to those words and sending back immense emotion without doing anything at all. I love this scene the best out of everything Paddy Chayefsky has written because it feels so very real. This woman's scorn will not play out with clothes thrown out of windows, faces slapped, hysterical tears, or biting bitchy words about how lousy he is in bed, because that's something that mostly happens in the movies. This scene was a woman distraught that after all the indiscretions she has tolerated over the years, she's losing him. She tells the truth, that after creating a family and a home, a haven for him, and standing by his side for decades at office gatherings and cocktail parties, that he is just walking away. He may not have passion for her any longer, but after all she has done for him, she is absolutely entitled to respect and allegiance. It's a beautiful line and she delivered it so fiercely that you can see how it just shrivels Holden's character to a dried pit. Reflected in his sad, sorry eyes is the knowledge that she is absolutely right and that he is a complete and utter shit for leaving her, all for a fleeting relationship that is doomed to end almost as soon as it begins. They are both so good in this brief scene, but Beatrice just blew me away with her every word and every movement; so real that it felt like a documentary, not something staged and rehearsed. I just now looked and it turns out Ms. Straight won an Oscar for her role. Wikipedia said the following "She was on screen for five minutes and two seconds, the shortest performance to win an Academy Award for acting." And now you know why - she is that good.

(photo kidnapped from foggedclarity)