Network (1976)

Regisseur:

Sidney Lumet

Drehbuchautor:

Paddy Chayefsky (written by)

Premierendatum:

29. Januar 1977 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama

Werbezeile:

Not since the dawn of time has America experienced a man like Howard Beale!

Plot:

A TV network cynically exploits a deranged ex-TV anchor's ravings and revelations about the media for their own profit.

Plot Keywords:

One Word Title | TV News | No Music | News | Televised Killing

Filmpreise:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 14 wins & 19 nominations

Nutzerkommentare:

We Have Seen the Future, And It Sucks

Besetzung

Faye Dunaway	...	Diana Christensen
William Holden	...	Max Schumacher
Peter Finch	...	Howard Beale
Robert Duvall	...	Frank Hackett
Wesley Addy	...	Nelson Chaney
Ned Beatty	...	Arthur Jensen
Arthur Burghardt	...	Great Ahmed Kahn
Bill Burrows	...	TV Director
John Carpenter	...	George Bosch
Jordan Charney	...	Harry Hunter
Kathy Cronkite	...	Mary Ann Gifford
Ed Crowley	...	Joe Donnelly
Jerome Dempsey	...	Walter C. Amundsen
Conchata Ferrell	...	Barbara Schlesinger
Gene Gross	...	Milton K. Steinman

Alternativ:

Network (Österreich) (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) [de]

Länge:

121 Min

Produktionsland:

USA

Sprache:

Englisch

Farbe:

Farbe (Metrocolor)

Seitenverhältnis:

1.85 : 1

Tonverfahren:

Mono

Altersfreigabe:

Iceland:12 | Canada:R (Nova Scotia/Ontario) | South Korea:15 | Argentina:16 | Australia:M | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Singapore:M18 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R | West Germany:16

Drehorte:

CFTO-TV Studios, Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Firma:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Dies und das:

The movie's line "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" was voted as the #19 movie quote by the American Film Institute

Pannen:

Anachronismus: The obituary for UBS Chairman of the Board Edward George Ruddy is shown with the character's information superimposed over the title area, with real January, 1975 obituaries for Revlon founder Charles Revson and screenwriter Sidney Buchman listed below. Additionally, the movie is set during fall 1975, months after Ruddy's death.

Dialogzitate:

[first lines]
Narrator: This story is about Howard Beale, the acclaimed news anchorman on UBS T.V. In this time, however, he was a mandarin of television with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969, however, his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year, his wife died, and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share. He became morose and isolated, started to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks. The news was broken to him by Max Schumacher, who was the president of the news division at UBS. The two old friends got properly pissed.
Howard Beale: [on the street] I was at CBS with Ed Murrow in 1951.
Max Schumacher: Must've been 1950 then.
[Beale nods]
Max Schumacher: I was at NBC, uh, associate producer. Morning News. I was just a kid. 26 years old.
[Not interested, Beale wanders off, until Schumacher stops him]
Max Schumacher: Anyway... anyway... they're building a lower level of the George Washington Bridge.
[Interested, Beale listens]
Max Schumacher: We were doing a remote from there.
Howard Beale, Max Schumacher: [start to laugh and snicker in unison]
Max Schumacher: And nobody told me!
[Beale keeps laughing, very interested]
Max Schumacher: Next morning I get a call, "Where the hell are YOU? You're supposed to be in the George Washington Bridge!"
[Beale and Schumacher exchange laughs]
Max Schumacher: I jump outta bed, throw my raincoat over my pajamas, I run downstairs, I run into the street,
[Schumacher runs into the street]
Max Schumacher: SO I TAIL A CAB, AND I SAY TO THE CABBY, "TAKE ME TO THE MIDDLE OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE!"
[Beale laughs]
Max Schumacher: And the cabby turns around and he says...
[giggles]
Max Schumacher: he says "Don't do it, buddy! You're a young man! Ya got your whole life ahead of ya!"
Howard Beale, Max Schumacher: [shriek in hysterics, as Beale gives Schumacher a hug]
Max Schumacher: Did I ever tell ya that one before?

Bezüge zu anderen Titeln:

Ausschnittsweise enthalten in The 34th Annual Golden Globe Awards (1977) (TV)

We Have Seen the Future, And It Sucks

This movie came out when I was nine years old, and I saw it on network TV the following year, lured by the brouhaha that surrounded the use of the "barnyard epithet" during prime time. I loved this movie before I understood it, and I worship it now. Like "Elmer Gantry" or "1984," it's a work of didactic art that only fails on an imaginative level -- Sinclair Lewis couldn't grasp how debased evangelism would become, Orwell couldn't foresee the excesses of Mao or Pol Pot, and Chayevsky couldn't envision the absolute decline of television from a vast wasteland to a malevolent sewer. Fox News, reality TV, even the OJ chase, "Network" anticipates every vile bit of it.

Now, it's ridiculously overwritten -- NO ONE is as articulate as the characters in this film, and most certainly, no one who works in television is as literate as Diana Christensen (the Faye Dunaway character). I doubt that poet laureates or even Eminem could spew as witty an aside as "muttering mutilated Marxism." But damn if that isn't part of its charm. Plus, outside of Max Schumacher (William Holden), the characters are pretty much archetypes instead of real people (the Robert Duvall character might as well wear a black cape and top hat), but their two-dimensionality works as a good metaphor for Max's seduction into the "shrieking nothingness" or television. Plus the actors are so superb they make screeching caricatures into almost-sympathetic characters: Duvall is a credible and charismatic villain, Finch is a fine mad prophet and Faye Dunaway manages to make a shrill, manipulative, soulless neurotic so damn cute and sexy you'll want to leave your wife for her, too, just as long as she promises to keep sitting cross-legged on your desk and hitching up her skirt. (Therein lies the real eroticism, forget the intentionally mechanical, unerotic coupling later in the flick). Anyway, this is complex, high art masquerading as popular entertainment, go rent it now.