THE FILMS: Network (1976, Sidney Lumet), A Face in the Crowd (1957, Elia Kazan), Contagion (2011, Steven Soderbergh)
THE CONNECTION: Films which now seem to have predicted the future.
THE THINKING: Quite a few films are looked at today as having predicted some aspect of the future. Whether it’s HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey foreseeing the AI we use today, or the online data theft Sandra Bullock’s The Net so unfortunately envisioned, creative filmmakers have always had an eye toward what was to come—either knowingly or unknowingly. A lot of these films are considered science fiction, but the three films in this week’s triple feature aren’t fantastic; they’re cautionary tales of culture gone wrong, and in one case an all-too-real world response to a global virus.
Network, Sidney Lumet (1976)
The 1976’s Oscar-winning film Network is often considered the gold standard for how Hollywood has predicted the future—especially on television. Through its story of Howard Beale (Peter Finch), an aging newsman whose ratings are on the steady decline, being elbowed out by up-and-coming programming exec Diana Christensen (an Oscar-winning role for Faye Dunaway), we see audiences clamoring to watch more sensational shows starring real people. The network basically becomes one long episode of The Jerry Springer Show. Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, Beale has an on-air breakdown and becomes part of spectacle. In the end, the absurdity of what the medium has become wins out and television will never be the same.
Network opened to very good reviews (and won four Oscars)—most of which recognized the satire in Chayefsky’s script. They didn’t understand it to be something which predicted the future, but many saw it as a dramatization of what was happening in the moment. The TV landscape was changing and this film almost documenting it in real time. It wouldn’t be until years later that it became a prophetic warning sign. Today the chaos at the film’s UBS network might play best as a reality show with Howard Beale and Diana Christensen talking directly into the camera between segments of them wrapped up in the absurdity of creating what less discerning audiences crave.
A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan (1957)
Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd from 1957 tells the story of Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith in his debut screen performance), a folk-singing drifter who is “discovered” in the local drunk tank by a radio producer (Patricia Neal). From the very start he is loud and oozing with bravado. His charm and outspokenness make him an overnight sensation with radio listeners and his star rises. He quickly lands a television show and a national viewership is exposed to his folky disdain for authority. They eat it up and his success grows—and so does his ego—eventually culminating with power among the political elite. But the medium which made him will also be his downfall.
Lonesome Rhodes was an outsider who got on television. His charisma and anti-authority point of view resonated with the masses until he became a demigod with a nation of loyalists listening to every word he said—and this was before reality television. You can see why both film and political writers have cited A Face in the Crowd in their writings over the past seven or eight years.
Contagion, Steven Soderbergh (2011)
Anyone who has lived through the past few years will understand just how prescient 2011’s Contagion is. Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns worked with virologists and other scientists to create an accurate depiction of what a global pandemic would look like, and we now know that they were very good at their jobs. Watching this in retrospect is eerie; it’s almost like a documentary. Luckily we haven’t gone so far down the path that we’ve entered into the territory of The Road, but at this point we’re probably only about halfway through Contagion’s timeline, so time will tell.
In the meantime, Soderbergh and Burns say that there’s a “philosophical sequel” in the works. There’s no telling when that will happen or what it will cover. But if Contagion‘s uncanny accuracy is any predictor, let’s hope this time around their future will look a little brighter.
On its own each of these films is a great predictor of the future, and in this particular order an interesting timeline appears. Together they follow one of the narratives of America over the past forty years: television changes and everyday people become personalities who are just as revered as actors and news anchors; an eager audience elevates one of the charismatic stars and he gets into politics; there is a global pandemic.
FURTHER READING (AND LISTENING):
- Mad As Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies, Dave Itzkoff
- “A Face in the Crowd: American Character,” April Wolfe for Criterion
- “The Real Virologist Behind Contagion,” Talk of the Nation (NPR)