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Comment by lrc | Hacker News Reader

In a weird coincidence, I watched the movie "Network" (1976) with my wife & kids last night, none of whom had ever seen it. They liked it. It didn't even feel very dated, despite the fact that the televisions all looked like the one in this picture. The complexity of the dialogue in the movie astonished us. More was expected of the audience back then.

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One of the strengths of Network is the lack of music. In fact if I remember correctly the opening scene is just the camera moving through a newsroom with ambient sound.

Music can date a film badly.

True. It's also very hard to overcome the temptation to put in too much of it to prop up scenes that the director/producer/editor isn't sure about.

I'm sure you can find lots of bad and shallow movies released in 1976 (e.g. a rather bad remake of King Kong) though there were also a number of good films in addition to Network (All the President's Men, Taxi Driver, Rocky). Network was particularly good though and seems rather prescient today.

> More was expected of the audience back then.

The following year Star Wars was released, so I guess 1976 was the last year of movies with complex dialogue. :)

Or maybe, instead, there has always been a wide range of dialogue complexity in films.

you mean it wasn't watered down for the lowest common denominator like the user interfaces of today?

edit: to clarify, I do not mean things like accessibility, I mean "beautiful" user interfaces that are frustrating for power users. just a sideways rant.

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