The other week I brought the Blu-ray of Network home to enjoy. In between marveling once more at how prescient and always-timely the Paddy Chayefsky script remains, and wondering whether or not the film had been properly framed or possibly cropped for the Blu-ray release (this came to mind immediately during the bedroom scene between Faye Dunaway and William Holden, mainly because I’m pretty sure that at one time or another, I’ve seen more of Faye Dunaway in this scene than I saw on the Blu-ray), I also took some time to reconsider whether or not Peter Finch’s famous “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore” scene would constitute one of film history’s Classic Movie Freakouts.
To make this determination (and thus better decide whether or not to include it in this video appraisal of my favorite classic movie freakouts), I realized I had to get specific about how I would be defining the term “freakout” for the purposes of assembling my favorites. A quick Google search for the popularly accepted definition reveals the following:
freak-out
/ˈfrēkout/
noun
informal
noun: freak-out; plural noun: freak-outs; noun: freakout; plural noun: freakouts
a wildly irrational reaction or spell of behavior.
So, does this mean Finch’s “mad as hell” monologue would so obviously be something I should include, because it’s such an obvious choice, and I do love the movie big-time, and that scene in particular? I say, not so fast. And by “not so fast,” I mean: Of course it’s an obvious choice; it might even be the obvious choice, which, you might rap me on the knuckles for saying, makes it absolutely no fun at all. The contrarian reason, though, really wouldn’t be good enough for me to leave it off this list of five.
Here’s the better “reason”: For this video essay, I decided that I’d narrow my picks for Classic Movie Freakouts to moments where the freakouts in question would represent scenes where the character loses control. Think about that Beale scene now a little more deeply. We (and many of the people involved in the scene) might think of Beale as behaving, like our textbook definition says, in a “wildly irrational” manner, but the way it should really be defined is that Beale is behaving in a wildly inappropriate manner. Dunaway’s Diana Christensen is right: People might be outraged by what they’re hearing, but Howard Beale’s commentary is clearly “articulating the popular rage.” The moment Beale actually “lost control” of himself happens earlier—when he first hears the voices, or when he collapses in the office. It happens later, too, when he talks himself into a seizure-like fainting spell during a broadcast of The Howard Beale Show. But in the “mad as hell” scene, the “new” Howard Beale is most definitely in control of himself.
So, there you have it. Mention Network to your heart’s content; I’ve now given you the actually-thought-out reason why you won’t find this rightly-legendary scene among the five discussed here, and I’ve also supplied you with the underlying principle I used to organize this curation of favorite Classic Movie Freakouts:
Did I leave out (so many) of your own picks for the finest Classic Movie Freakouts? Of course I did. Don’t freak out, though; you have plenty of space below to share memories and analyses of your own favorites.