Comedy on the edge

Faye Dunaway, "Network"

TV programmer Diana Christensen is every insecure male executive’s worst nightmare and Dunaway plays her to the hilt—eyes blazing with greed and a mind so success-obsessed that she even talks ratings during sex. Somehow, Dunaway's over-the-top approach works beautifully (the performance won her a Best Actress Oscar), and writer Paddy Chayefsky wisely keeps the satiric focus more on America’s sacrifice of idealism for commercial gain than on women elbowing their way into male-dominated fields.

Does she go too far?: What could have been one shrill note instead proved a worthy forerunner to other surprisingly shrewd portrayals of steely corporate-ladder climbers, including Sigourney Weaver in “Working Girl” and Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada.”