Network (1976)
90 %
Reviews Counted: 42 Fresh: 38 Rotten:4 Average Rating: 8/10
Runtime: 4 hrs 35 mins
Synopsis: 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... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy
Director: Sidney Lumet
Screenwriter: Paddy Chayefsky
Producer: Howard Gottfried
Composer: Elliot Lawrence
Screenwriter: Paddy Chayefsky
Producer: Howard Gottfried
Composer: Elliot Lawrence
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Reviews
Finch's spouting is impressive, but we prefer Holden's sardonic edge, even if his big speeches seem the most predictably written.
Comment
06/26/07
Chayefsky was apparently serious about much of this shrill, self-important 1976 satire about television, interlaced with bile about radicals and pushy career women, and so were some critics at the time.
06/26/07
Top Critic
For some reason, Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning satire was perceived as a drama when the movie came out in 1976. Much ahead of its time, the film was a cautionary tale of the news media as infotainment (emphasis on the secon part of the concept).
09/11/06
So truthful, so prescient, it's painful. Paddy Chayevsky delivers one of the best screenplays ever written.
08/02/06
Much of Chayefsky's script seems to have been written with megaphone in hand, which is close to how director Sidney Lumet airs it out. Yet in retrospect, maybe the ravings of Finch as a deranged anchorman aren't so far from surreal madness of Jerry Spring
03/17/06
One would assume that a 1976 film about network television would feel dated today, but director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky had such a fine concept that Network seems downright contemporary.
03/08/06
Rare is the social satire that rings as true as Network does, and the film is even more topical today than it was thirty years ago.
02/28/06
If Network had the ring of truth to it in 1976, you can be sure it's even truer today.
02/15/06
A well-crafted piece of celluloid that holds up quite nicely in the feeding-frenzy mentality that defines modern media.
12/06/05
One of the greatest in a great year for movies. My favorite William Holden performance.
01/08/05
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