Stephen Farber

“Chayefsky has also created a gallery of juicy characters to populate his satire. The film gives a marvelous sense of the backstage intrigue at a major network. Chayefsky has attended enough of these secret “powwows and confabs” to understand the elaborate power plays; he is unmistakably fascinated by the gamesmanship of these corrupt, cynical characters….

“Chayefsky’s triumph is the character of Diana Christensen, the programming executive who sees how to use howard Beale to enhance her own position at the network. Chayefsky has created the best woman character in an American movie in years—a power-hungry executive who is capable of competing with the men on their own terrain and outsmarting them. The irony is that feminists, who have been pleading for just this kind of heroine, may be uncomfortable with Diana because she strikes a little too close to home. Feminists seem to prefer a heroine who is either an abused victim (as in A Woman Under the Influence) or a spunky, goodhearted earth mother (as in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More). The scheming, commanding Diana is closer to the black widow heroines of forties movies—the striking, aggressive, ambitious bitches played by Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis.

Diana is a creature of the media, compulsively chattering about ratings and shares, spitting out all the counterculture clichés that she has picked up from reading the right magazine articles. She is ruthless and poisonous, but also cunning, articulate, seductive, witty, self-aware and powerful. In a word, she is formidable, and Chayefsky never makes the mistake of underestimating her. Faye Dunaway rises to the challenge of the role and gives the performance of her career. Sidney Lumet is a wizard at drawing things out of actors that no other director has tapped. Dunaway has never before given a performance of such dizzying energy; her work here is a revelation.”

Stephen Farber
New West, November 8, 1976