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Network (1976)
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Overview
User Rating:
Director:
Writer:
Paddy Chayefsky (written by)
Release Date:
29 January 1977 (Japan)
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Tagline:
Not since the dawn of time has America experienced a man like Howard Beale! more
Plot:
A TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit. full summary | full synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Awards:
Won 4 Oscars.
Another 14 wins
&
19 nominations
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NewsDesk:
(41 articles)
Robert Towne: The Hollywood Interview
(From The Hollywood Interview. 4 November 2009, 12:49 PM, PST)
AFI's 100 Years ...100 Movie Quotes
(From Extra. 4 November 2009, 4:45 AM, PST)
(From The Hollywood Interview. 4 November 2009, 12:49 PM, PST)
AFI's 100 Years ...100 Movie Quotes
(From Extra. 4 November 2009, 4:45 AM, PST)
User Comments:
We Have Seen the Future, And It Sucks
more (231 total)
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 |
Additional Details
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
121 min
Country:
Language:
Color:
Color (Metrocolor)
Aspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Certification:
Canada:R (Nova Scotia/Ontario) |
Iceland:12 |
South Korea:15 |
Argentina:16 |
Australia:M |
Canada:13+ (Quebec) |
Canada:PG (Manitoba) |
Finland:K-16 |
Norway:16 |
Singapore:M18 |
Sweden:15 |
UK:15 |
USA:R |
West Germany:16
Filming Locations:
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
Beatrice Straight is only on screen for five minutes and forty seconds, making hers the briefest performance ever to win an Oscar.
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Goofs:
Continuity: Halfway through the first scene in Diana Christianson's office, the door, which had previously been open, is closed. Later, she walks over to the door and closes it again.
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Quotes:
[first lines]
Narrator: This story is about Howard Beale, the acclaimed news anchorman on UBS T.V. In this time, however, he was a mandarin of television 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, started to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks. The news was broken to him by Max Schumacher, who was the president of the news division at UBS. The two old friends got properly pissed.
Howard Beale: [on the street] I was at CBS with Ed Murrow in 1951.
Max Schumacher: Must've been 1950 then.
[Beale nods]
Max Schumacher: I was at NBC, uh, associate producer. Morning News. I was just a kid. 26 years old.
[Not interested, Beale wanders off, until Schumacher stops him]
Max Schumacher: Anyway... anyway... they're building a lower level of the George Washington Bridge.
[Interested, Beale listens]
Max Schumacher: We were doing a remote from there.
Howard Beale, Max Schumacher: [start to laugh and snicker in unison]
Max Schumacher: And nobody told me!
[Beale keeps laughing, very interested]
Max Schumacher: Next morning I get a call, "Where the hell are YOU? You're supposed to be in the George Washington Bridge!"
[Beale and Schumacher exchange laughs]
Max Schumacher: I jump outta bed, throw my raincoat over my pajamas, I run downstairs, I run into the street,
[Schumacher runs into the street]
Max Schumacher: SO I TAIL A CAB, AND I SAY TO THE CABBY, "TAKE ME TO THE MIDDLE OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE!"
[Beale laughs]
Max Schumacher: And the cabby turns around and he says...
[giggles]
Max Schumacher: he says "Don't do it, buddy! You're a young man! Ya got your whole life ahead of ya!"
Howard Beale, Max Schumacher: [shriek in hysterics, as Beale gives Schumacher a hug]
Max Schumacher: Did I ever tell ya that one before?
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Narrator: This story is about Howard Beale, the acclaimed news anchorman on UBS T.V. In this time, however, he was a mandarin of television 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, started to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks. The news was broken to him by Max Schumacher, who was the president of the news division at UBS. The two old friends got properly pissed.
Howard Beale: [on the street] I was at CBS with Ed Murrow in 1951.
Max Schumacher: Must've been 1950 then.
[Beale nods]
Max Schumacher: I was at NBC, uh, associate producer. Morning News. I was just a kid. 26 years old.
[Not interested, Beale wanders off, until Schumacher stops him]
Max Schumacher: Anyway... anyway... they're building a lower level of the George Washington Bridge.
[Interested, Beale listens]
Max Schumacher: We were doing a remote from there.
Howard Beale, Max Schumacher: [start to laugh and snicker in unison]
Max Schumacher: And nobody told me!
[Beale keeps laughing, very interested]
Max Schumacher: Next morning I get a call, "Where the hell are YOU? You're supposed to be in the George Washington Bridge!"
[Beale and Schumacher exchange laughs]
Max Schumacher: I jump outta bed, throw my raincoat over my pajamas, I run downstairs, I run into the street,
[Schumacher runs into the street]
Max Schumacher: SO I TAIL A CAB, AND I SAY TO THE CABBY, "TAKE ME TO THE MIDDLE OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE!"
[Beale laughs]
Max Schumacher: And the cabby turns around and he says...
[giggles]
Max Schumacher: he says "Don't do it, buddy! You're a young man! Ya got your whole life ahead of ya!"
Howard Beale, Max Schumacher: [shriek in hysterics, as Beale gives Schumacher a hug]
Max Schumacher: Did I ever tell ya that one before?
more
Movie Connections:
References Singin' in the Rain (1952)
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FAQ
How much sex, violence, and profanity are in this movie?Any recommendations for a female character as annoying as Diana Christensen?
How does "Network" end?
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more (231 total)
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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.