Network
A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit.
29 August 1947, USA
28 March 1926, Woodstock, Illinois, USA
12 May 1914, Ferriday, Louisiana, USA
5 May 1940, New York City, New York, USA
12 December 1934, New York City, New York, USA
2 August 1938, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
28 September 1916, South Kensington, London, England, UK
19 June 1940, Queens, New York, USA
29 April 1936, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
6 February 1945, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
March 27, 2015
This tale of a failing network that feeds on the mental breakdown of one of its anchors, cannibalising itself for ratings, feels as savagely relevant now as it did when it was released nearly 40 years ago.
March 27, 2015
Criticised by some at the time for a certain naivety and lack of subtlety, this remains one of the most devastating condemnations of the media's urge to exploit.
February 17, 2011
The film's never been more timely.
February 04, 2014
Network taps into the hysteria of the television business at a time when the medium was still important, a monolithic and competitive media industry hungry to tap into the next big thing and do anything for ratings.
January 26, 2006
Slick, 'adult', self-congratulatory, and almost entirely hollow.
July 18, 2011
The plot that Paddy Chayefsky has concocted to prove this point is so crazily preposterous that even in post-Watergate America -- where we know that bats can get loose in the corridors of power -- it is just impossible to accept.
May 20, 2003
Network can be faulted both for going too far and not far enough, but it's also something that very few commercial films are these days. It's alive.
June 26, 2007
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.
March 27, 2015
Network is neither fair nor modest. It's full of bile, travesty, scolding -- and wry humour.
September 06, 2013
The mystic quality within "Network" is that it pitches curve balls at us that have meanings relative to our unique situations, and all of them encompass a value that is beyond simple comprehension.
September 26, 2016
Whatever its flaws, Network is a picture that can stand on its own. And does.
September 17, 2014
Rousing, exciting satire, if not always the most perfectly focused and sophisticated.
