Network | | Cast : | Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch | | Director : | Sidney Lumet | | Studio : | Warner Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1976 | | DVD Released Date : | May 16, 2000 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Original Language), English (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 05, 2005 | | Summary | A great movie that is made to last | Content
 | Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, Willam Holden gave a superb performance because of the best lines they had. The DVD offered a quiz, on who spoke what in the movie, which allowed the audience to recapture part of the fine script.
The movie was successful not because it gave some memorable moments and lines. It was memorable because it was well-balanced in all respects. Thanks to the directing and the script, no one outshined another. No scene was redundant. The bits and pieces fell in the right places to tell a grippng tale.
The scene where Howard Beale (Peter Finch), as the host of an entirely new show, asked the audience, across the whole country, to open their windows and shouted "I'm not going to take this anymore" was mesmerising. The director was clever to arrange that people shouted into the void on a dark rainy night.
I was first disappointed to see Mr. Arther Jensen (Ned Beatty) as the top brass of the takeover company. Yet the meeting he had with Howard Beale (Peter Finch) at a dim conference room with his clear and hynotizing voice delivering his philosophy was a master stroke. Howard Beale was practically brain-washed. The whole meeting turned out to be critical - the twist that determined the ultimate destiny of Howard Beale and his show.
I was amazed at how much depth the director and the script could go into in a movie lasting merely 2 hours or so. A movie of the 70s that is made to last with Oscars for Best Actor, Best Actress and Best supporting Actress. Don't miss it. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 14, 2005 | | Summary | You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale | Content
| Mr. Chayevsky has made, easily, one of the greatest contributions to the art of cinema; one that transcends mere entertainment and holds court within the realm of the social, psychological, and political.
My fellow reviewers have been eloquent in pointing out the details, merits, and slight flaws within this movie. But what I am impressed with is how the film exposes the horrifying economic and social realities of our time.
Ned Batty's brief scene in the confrence room with Finch's Beale character has proven itself to be frighteningly accurate in its decription of the disingenous oligarichal tyranny we live under today.
No video collection should be without "Network": nobody can afford to ignore this film. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 02, 2005 | | Summary | Network scores | Content
| Network is one of the most intelligently written films I've ever seen; the characters in Chayevsky's script fight viciously, tear each other down, rant against the "isms" of society, and fall in and out of love - always sounding authentically like the educated executives that they are.
This isn't a talking-heads film, however. The plot, and the broadcasting world put on frank display, is (to use a cliched phrase) eerily prescient of today's TV climate of corporate merges and (ridiculous) reality programming. When Faye Dunaway's ambitious and wispily beautiful programming exec, Diana Christensen, pitches an actual-footage lead-in to a drama about guerilla bank robbers to her colleagues, they balk - but we aren't shocked. Audiences in 1976 most likely scoffed at this idea just as these characters do, but in our creatively sucked-dry world of non-scripted Fear Factors and Survivors, it sounds like a ratings magnet. And Diana is right - it scores. The film does ride the line between the ridiculous (or satiric) when urban terrorists become producers of this show, and make demands of the TV suits with wild rants and violence, and when mad-as-hell news anchor Howard Beale (played by a thinner, edgier Peter Finch) turns his authentic one-time rant against all that is wrong with life into a production where he "faints" at the apex of his Dennis Miller-meets-TV evangelist soliloquies.
Watch Network to be wowed by the language of the characters. (Strangely, the sparse voice-overs contradict the crackling intelligence of these TV-land players with dry, monotone authority.) Watch it to appreciate the acting of a generation since replaced by less impressive stars. You'll wonder if Chayevsky employed a psychic when he wrote this amazing script. The tagline "Television will never be the same!" is a prediction, two decades early, of the onslaught of dreck that has in fact transformed television into a wasteland of envelope-shoving, outlandish programming. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 11, 2005 | | Summary | "I want you to get mad." | Content
| Patty Chayevsky's scathing black comedy about network television and its insane and singleminded concern about only the ratings. It's the story of Howard Beale, "the first person killed on national television because he had lousy ratings." Beale, a newscaster whose ratings have ben slipping, is about to be replaced; he goes berserk while on the air and tells his audience what he really thinks about the world. The ratings soar and the station goes on to use him for their own profits. Faye Dunaway does an excellent job as a soulless executive who would do anything to promote herself in her job.
The only problem is that it goes on too long. All the points worth making are made during the first hour of the picture, and the second hour just keeps hammering away at them. There is also a middle-age love crisis suffered by Peter Finch that becomes pointless and obvious.
But where it is good it is VERY good. There is an obvious comparison to be made with the more recent BROADCAST NEWS, which was a lot more subtle and multi-dimmensional. Definitely worth a watch, though. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 09, 2005 | | Summary | "I'm mad as hell, and i'm not going to take it anymore!!!" | Content
| I just saw this biting media satire recently and couldn't believe that it was made in the mid 70's. It seems as fresh and as relevant(maybe even more so) now as when it first came out(as other reviewers have pointed out). Hilarious at times, for example the scene where Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch's characters are in the process of their affair and Dunaways character is talking about work the entire time, I guess you have to see it...What also defines this movie is the great acting from everyone, nice direction and the superb script of biting satire(also with some black humor thrown in). Definetely one of the better movies i've seen lately, Highly Recommended. My rating: 9.5/10. |
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