Network (1976)
Starring
Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Robert Duvall
Director
Sidney Lumet
Awards
Academy Awards
Best Actor - Peter Finch
Best Actress - Faye Dunaway
Best Supporting Actress - Beatrice
Straight
Best Original Screenplay - Paddy
Chayefsky
Academy Award Nominations
Best Actor - William Holden
Best Director - Sidney Lumet
Best Picture
Plot Synopsis
A fourth-rated network, United Broadcasting System (UBS),
unsuccessfully fights off a corporate takeover. The changing guard heralds a new
atmosphere at the network, as new executives, who show an apparent lack of concern for
ethics and morals, take power. Their first action: firing Howard Beale, the network's
longtime news anchor. Despondent, with nothing left to lose, Beale goes berserk on the air
and threatens to commit suicide in one week's time. Viewers, excited by the possibility of
this on-air spectacle, tune in; ratings zoom and the new programming whiz takes advantage
of the furor by developing a new form of live, violent "guerrilla television".
But the advertisers don't like what's going on at all, and in the dark, secluded corridors
of the networks headquarters, they quietly conspire to end Howard Beale's brief moment of
glory.
Film Notes
"Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy
Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But while
Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of
"reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, it's every bit as potent
now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the
greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about the ratings frenzy at the cost
of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and
Beatrice Straight (who each won Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his
finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low
ratings. His character's response is to announce he'll kill himself on live television two
weeks hence. What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman's descent
into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a
celebrity. Dunaway plays the frigid, ratings-obsessed producer who pursues success with
cold-blooded zeal; Holden is the married executive who tries to thaw her out during his
own seething midlife crisis. Through it all, Chayefsky (via Finch) urges the viewer to
repeat the now-famous mantra "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it
anymore!" to reclaim our humanity from the medium that threatens to steal it
away." (Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com)
Peter Finch, who played the character Howard Beale, received the
1976 Oscar for Best Actor for his performance, posthumously. Network was his last
big-screen film, although his last film was the TV movie, Raid on Entebbe.
Rated: 
Rated: