Network (1976) | Great Movies

Taglines: Television will never be the same!

Network movie storyline. Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is an aging TV anchorman for UBS who is fired, effective in two weeks, after his ratings have been steadily deteriorating. He reacts to this by sensationally announcing on live television his intention to commit suicide on air. In doing so, Beale becomes a major TV icon and one of the most valuable assets to the Communications Corporation of America (CCA), the company that is gradually taking control of UBS.

As a result he is given his own show as ‘the mad prophet of the air-waves’. He appears live on television every week-day evening to tell the real truth to the people of America. The program is a huge success but Beale uses his power to make startling revelations about CCA, leaving the company executives with a serious problem.

Network is a 1976 American satirical drama film written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, about a fictional television network, UBS, and its struggle with poor ratings. The film stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Robert Duvall and features Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty and Beatrice Straight.

At the Academy Awards, Network won three of the four acting awards (the only other film to achieve that was, A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951, when it won in three of the acting categories). Peter Finch died before the 1977 ceremony and was the only performer to win a posthumous Academy Award (until 2009 when Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor). The statuette itself was collected by Finch’s widow, Eletha Finch.

Network (1976) - Faye Dunaway — Network (1976) – Faye Dunaway

Beatrice Straight’s performance as Louise Schumacher occupied only five minutes and two seconds of screen time, making it the shortest performance to win an Oscar to date (breaking Gloria Grahame’s nine minutes and 32 seconds screen time record for The Bad and the Beautiful in 1953).

In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. In 2002, it was inducted into the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame as a film that has “set an enduring standard for American entertainment”.

In 2005, the two Writers Guilds of America voted Chayefsky’s script one of the 10 greatest screenplays in the history of cinema. In 2007, the film was 64th among the 100 greatest American films as chosen by the American Film Institute, a ranking slightly higher than the one AFI had given it ten years earlier.