Network (1976)
Genre: Drama
Duration: 121 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: Sidney Lumet
Stars: Faye Dunaway, William Holden and Robert Duvall
IMDb score:
8,1 (185.929)
Releasedate: 14 November 1976
Network plot
"Television will never be the same."
UBS's aging newscaster Howard Beale is fired due to disappointing ratings. He responds to this by declaring that he will commit suicide on-air on live TV. This makes Beale a big TV celebrity, something that the struggling station could use. He gets his own show where he can give his opinion about anything and everything every week.
Actors and actresses
Howard Beale
Diana Christensen
Max Schumacher
Frank Hackett
Louise Schumacher
Nelson Chaney
Arthur Jensen
Great Ahmed Kahn
TV Director
George Bosch
Reviews & comments
kos
-
- 46780 messages
- 8923 votes
A really great movie. Very good story, made even more perfect, acting performance as you very rarely see. In short, great movie.
Translated from Dutch · View original
baspls
-
- 4118 messages
- 1673 votes
Network is a satire on the influence of television in everyday life. It's all about ratings and the people of 'the network' don't shy away from using sensational news to boost the advertising. When an experienced newscaster is told that he is being fired, he announces in the news that he is going to commit suicide. The result? A huge increase in viewing figures. The network decides they can still use the newsreader.
The film only starts with the newsreader's story but gradually it expands. Network is a thoroughly self-aware film. Characters talk about progression over time using terms that deal with the structure of scenarios. The underlying symbolism of everything is already understood by the characters.
I can imagine that the film is no longer easy to follow from about half way through. Then it is not only the newsreader who rants strangely, but the businessmen also start with long monologues. I found it all very interesting. It does make you think a lot about the influence of money. The pinnacle was perhaps when they pay a terrorist group to carry out attacks and the Marxist intermediary goes completely crazy when she learns that her expenses are no longer covered by the budget.
What is also funny about Network is that it is a portrait of its time. Television was the main source of information in the 1970s. Nowadays Television hardly represents anything and I think I will experience a time when there will be no more television broadcasting at all. But you could make a comparable film today about the influence of social media on people's lives.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Sergio Leone
-
- 4461 messages
- 3142 votes
poor.
Not that I expected much from it, but Network is still disappointingly flat. As a critical view of the television world, it's all pretty superficial; As an outlier for the superficiality, I'll take Peter Finch, who apparently won an Oscar for Best Actor, but has bizarrely little to do and rather acts as a village idiot in the background around which some more interesting things take place.
Then I could enjoy, for example, Faye Dunaway as a smart career woman. Not that people do the right things with her character. That affair is pretty weak - William Holden is too corny for me to empathize with his midlife crisis. Ultimately, that dustyness gets in the way of a sharp film. Too bad, because it might have been there.
2
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