One of the best movies we've seen in years. The acting was at the highest level by all; Faye Dunaway was magnificent. The plot was entirely believable and unbelievably prescient - it could be written today. It's rated R, presumably for language - but the language seems appropriate in context, and sex is only suggested - there is no nudity - and there is no violence; it really should be a PG-13, and teenagers could learn a lot from it. Highly recommended - and whoever does the ratings should change the rating to make it more widely available.

Yes, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” came from this film. Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway will draw you into this crazy-but-not-crazy film in which a laid off newscaster transforms into a “prophet” who catapults into fame. Finch as Howard Beale is mesmerizing as he rants and raves to the TV audience about their desperate reality, with Dunaway and her crew watching in disbelief and elation as Nielsen ratings skyrocket. The movie viewer feels like part of the TV audience, and the shocking ending seems natural in the twisted plot.

Interactions between the characters are superficial and transient, proving that TV ratings rule over moral behavior. Schumacher (William Holden) insists that Beale needs psychiatric treatment, yet he watches Beale’s rise and fall without intervening. Schumacher and Dunaway have a brief affair which both acknowledge could never last. The network boss (Arthur Jensen played by Ned Beatty) is flat and predictable until a remarkable scene when he and Beale sit at opposite ends of the long board room table. Chameleon-like Jensen becomes the voice in Beale’s delusions that commands him to retract his on-air comments about a controversial business merger. Other than that, no one dares to disturb the madman because success is anything that the general public will watch.

Viewers in 2017 will see a new truth in this movie, after a presidential election that demonstrated the unprecedented power of the media. As a teenager in 1976, I was too wrapped up in the movie Rocky to notice Network in the theaters. Very glad to have seen it over 40 years later when I can appreciate the strange and sad meaning.

This is an amazing film, I shall not spoil anything for anyone.

but all the acting in this film is TOP NOTCH.

the film's message is relevant even more so today in 2019 with the way media and news and TV shows and celebrities dictate peoples lives even to the point of co-opting and preaching politics and world views to others.

i love this film and its politically neutral message about what america lost after the advent of the Television.

Anyone who loves movies or politics should see this film

9/10 would watch again and again and again

A movie from the 70’s that shows the evolution of media today. The movie follows the madness of one news announcer and the frantic race a network does to keep up with the circus of what used to be respectable news. This predicts the Jerry Springer era perfectly by people I should be humbled to watch.

This movie was filmed in 1976 and it was considered an outrageous lampooning comedy on the State of Television. (Huge hit by the way) As if anyone would ever stand up in front of millions of people and yell "I'm MAD AS HELL and I'm NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE"! So here we are 44 years later, and we WISH that's the craziest thing people would do on Network TV these days. Sydney Lummet and Chayefsky later said that they were not trying to make a satire, rather a cold and sober look at TV and where it was going .

So many interesting little gems here as well.
- William Holden almost turned down the part because Paddy Chayefsky required lots and lots of rehearsal from his actors and he did not think that he had the "chops" for that.
- Peter Finch was desperate to win the role of Howard Beale once he had read the script. He even offered to pay his own airfare to New York City for the screentest. But Sidney Lumet was concerned about Finch's Australian accent. Finch won the part after sending Lumet a recording of himself reading the New York Times with a perfect American accent.
- Beatrice Straight was on screen for only 5 minutes 40 seconds yet she won won Best Supporting Actress in 1977
That is the Shortest screen-time ever to have earned an actor / actress an Academy Award

What a powerful film!

It's also extremely cynical and may tempt you to completely give up on society because so many of the pointed commentaries on the media that you'll find in the film still apply today. Especially today!

This is the story of Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the alcoholic, depressed evening news anchor for the struggling UBS Network. He goes off script one evening and announces he's going to kill himself next week on air. This stirs up an enormous amount of crap as you may imagine, but he is allowed back on the air and as his (obvious) mental illness progresses his ratings increase.

This is a powerhouse showcase for all the actors involved, but Ned Beatty (as Arthur Jensen) blew me away. He is the epitome of corporate evil! I understand he did all his work on the film in just one day ... and that got him a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Faye Dunaway (as UBS programming director Diana Christensen) depicts a character so loathsome and devoid of -any- redeeming qualities that it must be seen to be believed. And William Holden (as former news director Max Schumacher) is the only character with any moral compass, but even he goes astray.

There's also a lot of Meta commentary and self-referential bits involving scripts that the actors are themselves playing out even as they get snarky about it!

And there's a hysterical scene involving a business meeting with a terrorist group that has it's own TV show (thanks to Diana)!

It's darkly funny (as in pitch-black), enormously cynical, and riveting.

HIGHLY Recommended!

As someone who used to work in media but has moved on due to a variety of issues I have with the industry, It captured the strange, cold mercurial vibe of people who reduce murder sex and war down to “coke cans” and amusement between commercials. I knew people who literally thought of everything in acts and their obsession is why they are successful even when common human warmth is severely lacking and all of their relationships revolve around getting up another level. Then there is the sheeple, uninformed audience. People learning everything from the tube. Oh boy the main actor And the writers deserves an Oscar! This should be required watching for anyone thinking about going into media. Think it was bad in 1976? Oh that was nothing in comparison to today. Today you won’t even hear some of the names and truths mentioned in your entertainment PROGRAMING. No one wants to hear to the truth... so they lie

This is one of those films I anticipated watching after hearing about it for years. But it was a major disappointment. Certain films are such a product of a particular time that they do not translate when it passes. Hair. Maybe Rebel Without A Cause. Network purports to be a biting satire, but it just falls flat, and what passes for satire is just clumsy and obvious. I thought the script was the main culprit. It was overwritten, as if the writer wrote draft after draft and tried to dress up the mundane dialogue by adding seemingly intelligent words at each passing. It never flows naturally and never impresses you. And things that were supposed to be biting commentaries like the "Mao Zedong hour" were just silly. The film had a number of actors I like (Holden, Duvall, Dunaway) but Dunaway's character never worked, a strangely underwritten character in an overwritten script. I never bought into her nor cared. I liked Finch's performance, although like everything else in the film it is oversold. Maybe I would have seen things differently if I saw it in 1976 during that time and before things like reality TV. But the movie does not age well at all.