Network (1976)

A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit.

Director:

Sidney Lumet

Writer:

Paddy Chayefsky

Stars:

Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch

Top Rated Movies #210 | Won 4 Oscars. Another 16 wins & 26 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Faye Dunaway	...	Diana Christensen
William Holden	...	Max Schumacher
Peter Finch	...	Howard Beale
Robert Duvall	...	Frank Hackett
Wesley Addy	...	Nelson Chaney
Ned Beatty	...	Arthur Jensen
Arthur Burghardt	...	Great Ahmed Kahn
Bill Burrows	...	TV Director
John Carpenter	...	George Bosch
Jordan Charney	...	Harry Hunter
Kathy Cronkite	...	Mary Ann Gifford
Ed Crowley	...	Joe Donnelly
Jerome Dempsey	...	Walter C. Amundsen
Conchata Ferrell	...	Barbara Schlesinger
Gene Gross	...	Milton K. Steinman

Storyline

In the 1970s, terrorist violence is the stuff of networks' nightly news programming and the corporate structure of the UBS Television Network is changing. Meanwhile, Howard Beale, the aging UBS news anchor, has lost his once strong ratings share and so the network fires him. Beale reacts in an unexpected way. We then see how this affects the fortunes of Beale, his coworkers (Max Schumacher and Diana Christensen), and the network.

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Plot Keywords:

media | television | television network | satire | ranting | 

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Taglines:

Not since the dawn of time has America experienced a man like Howard Beale!

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

R

Did You Know?

Trivia

Diana Christensen is loosely based on Lin Bolen.

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Goofs

Every one of Howard Beale's shows has the same studio audience (note the man in the black vest, with long hair and a beard).

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Quotes

[first lines]
Narrator: This story is about Howard Beale, who was the news anchorman on UBS TV. In his time, Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news, with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969, however, his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year, his wife died, and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share. He became morose and isolated, began to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, ...
[...]

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Connections

Referenced in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: Pilot (2006)

User Reviews

We Have Seen the Future, And It Sucks

This movie came out when I was nine years old, and I saw it on network TV the following year, lured by the brouhaha that surrounded the use of the "barnyard epithet" during prime time. I loved this movie before I understood it, and I worship it now. Like "Elmer Gantry" or "1984," it's a work of didactic art that only fails on an imaginative level -- Sinclair Lewis couldn't grasp how debased evangelism would become, Orwell couldn't foresee the excesses of Mao or Pol Pot, and Chayevsky couldn't envision the absolute decline of television from a vast wasteland to a malevolent sewer. Fox News, reality TV, even the OJ chase, "Network" anticipates every vile bit of it.

Now, it's ridiculously overwritten -- NO ONE is as articulate as the characters in this film, and most certainly, no one who works in television is as literate as Diana Christensen (the Faye Dunaway character). I doubt that poet laureates or even Eminem could spew as witty an aside as "muttering mutilated Marxism." But damn if that isn't part of its charm. Plus, outside of Max Schumacher (William Holden), the characters are pretty much archetypes instead of real people (the Robert Duvall character might as well wear a black cape and top hat), but their two-dimensionality works as a good metaphor for Max's seduction into the "shrieking nothingness" or television. Plus the actors are so superb they make screeching caricatures into almost-sympathetic characters: Duvall is a credible and charismatic villain, Finch is a fine mad prophet and Faye Dunaway manages to make a shrill, manipulative, soulless neurotic so damn cute and sexy you'll want to leave your wife for her, too, just as long as she promises to keep sitting cross-legged on your desk and hitching up her skirt. (Therein lies the real eroticism, forget the intentionally mechanical, unerotic coupling later in the flick). Anyway, this is complex, high art masquerading as popular entertainment, go rent it now.

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

27 November 1976 (USA)

Also Known As:

Network

Filming Locations:

Seaspray Inn, 101 Ocean Avenue, East Hampton, New York, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$3,800,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$23,689,877

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$23,690,757

Company Credits

Production Co:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

121 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1