Network (Special Edition) (1976)

"Network is brilliant...the cast...is stellar...  James Berardinelli's ReelViews
"A supremely well-acted, intelligent film.  Roger Ebert's Video Companion

Editor's Note With stunning prescience, Sidney Lumet's searing satire of television and the contemporary moment chronicles media corruption and the way that the public buys into the myths the media creates. The moral and spiritual turpitude delivered by the debilitating forces of television are rendered in sharp relief against a backdrop of crumbling humanity in what is regarded as one of the great satires in Hollywood history. With a visceral script from Paddy Chayefsky, NETWORK follows the doomed path of aging newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), who, upon learning that he is to be fired after decades as a news anchor, announces to millions of viewers that he will publicly commit suicide during his last broadcast. When the ratings consequently shoot up, hungry executive-in-training Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) seizes the moment to exploit Beale's Messianic nervous breakdown, turning his rage into the vehicle for the network's first Number One show and a nationwide craze. Who could have predicted that this 1976 film might someday influence an even more contagious trend in television broadcasting: the reality show?

	Arthur Burghardt
	Bill Burrows
	Faye Dunaway
	Ned Beatty
	Peter Finch
	Robert Duvall
	Wesley Addy
	William Holden
	Elliot Lawrence - Musical Score
	Howard Gottfried - Producer
	Owen Roizman - Cinematographer
	Paddy Chayefsky - Writer
	Sidney Lumet - Director

Sidney Lumet's NETWORK takes a close look at the lengths to which television stations will go to improve their ratings--pulling publicity stunts, playing up news team dramas, and constantly scheming behind the scenes.

"So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it and stick your head out and yell, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"----Howard Beale (Peter Finch)

"You're messing with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale!"----Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) to Howard Beale

Total Film
"...A vicious, exaggerated satire which aims for barbed black humour over belly laughs....[With a] sharp screenplay..." 09/01/2000 p.110

Premiere
"Finch won a posthumous Oscar for his all-over-the-map portrayal of Beale." 04/01/2004 p.62

Rolling Stone
4 stars out of 4 -- "If movies can tell the future, then this 1976 harbinger about a major network's calculated and deranged ratings grab is right on time." 03/09/2006 p97

Empire
"NETWORK is the perfect meeting of director and screenplay....Lumet and Chayefsky's real achievement is the subtle escalation of the drama..." 10/01/2008 p.177

Entertainment Weekly
"Craven TV execs like Faye Dunaway's may have seemed harmlessly cartoonish then, but now they feel like a dangerous prophecy come true." -- Grade: A 02/25/2011

Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide 10 of 10
...outrageous satire on television looks less and less like fantasy as the years pass... Entire cast explodes, particularly Dunaway as ruthless programmer, Holden as conscientious newsman, Duvall as shark-like v.p. , and Beatty as evangelistical board chairman. Well-deserved Oscars went to Finch (posthumously), Dunaway, Straight, and Chayefsky.