Product Description

Newscaster Howard Beale has a message for those who package reports of cute puppies, movie premieres and fender benders as hard news: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore." Sidney Lumet directs Paddy Chayefsky's satire (an Academy Award-winning* screenplay) about the things people do for love...and ratings. Three performers won Oscars.* Best Actress Faye Dunaway is the TV exec guarding ratings like a tigress protecting cubs. Best Actor Peter Finch is Beale, whose airwave rants become a phenomenon. And William Holden, Robert Duvall and Best Supporting Actress Beatrice Straight add to the fierce vitality.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:by Director Sidney Lumet
Theatrical Trailer
Documentaries:The Making of Network (6-part Documentary): The World and Words of Paddy Chayefsky; The Cast, the Characters; The Experience; The Style; Mad as Hell! The Creation of a Movie Moment; A Classic; Network by Walter Cronkite
Featurette:Dinah! Episodes featuring Peter Finch (1976) and Paddy Chayefsky (1977)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #616 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-02-28
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. But while Chayefsky's and director Sidney Lumet's take on television may seem quaint in the age of "reality TV" and Jerry Springer's talk-show fisticuffs, it's every bit as potent now as it was when the film was released in 1976. And because Chayefsky was one of the greatest of all dramatists, his Oscar-winning script about the ratings frenzy at the cost of cultural integrity is a showcase for powerhouse acting by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight (who each won Oscars), and Oscar nominee William Holden in one of his finest roles. Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who's been fired because of low ratings. His character's response is to announce he'll kill himself on live television two weeks hence. What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman's descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity. Dunaway plays the frigid, ratings-obsessed producer who pursues success with cold-blooded zeal; Holden is the married executive who tries to thaw her out during his own seething midlife crisis. Through it all, Chayefsky (via Finch) urges the viewer to repeat the now-famous mantra "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" to reclaim our humanity from the medium that threatens to steal it away. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Still Pertains to this Day!
Awesome picture which rings true to this very day! The message this movie sends is a relevant reflection of our Ameriacn society even unto the present.

Great satire
Film director Sidney Lumet is, with the possible exception of Robert Wise, the most underrated director in Hollywood history. When one looks at the list of great films in Lumet's career: 12 Angry Men, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Fail-Safe, Serpico, Murder On The Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, and a handful of others, one marvels, not only at what he accomplished, but that he's spent a quarter-century having churned out nothing but mediocrity since 1982's The Verdict. Yet, of all the films in his canon, perhaps the best, and certainly the most complex, was 1976's Network- the greatest black comedy this side of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb. It was to corporate America what Strangelove was to the military industrial complex.
Written by the nonpareil Paddy Chayefsky, Network is not only a prescient film, but still a cogent one, as remarkable as that claim seems. Whereas many films from the years in between its release and now have dated badly, the same cannot be said of Network. Like other visionary films, from Metropolis to The Trial, Network not only crafted a world unto itself, but a world that, in large part, has seen its day realize. Yes, there are no PC's on the desks of the network stooges, but other than that, the depiction of corporate America's deadly vapidity, its whoring of life and death and war and suffering into mere commodities, has all come true. Reality tv has shown that the only thing that Chayefsky's and Lumet's film has not yet seen come true is the assassination on live television that closes the film. This oddly vatic quality raises the question of whether the film can even rightly be called a satire. Perhaps a prophecy is closer to the mark, especially in how the fictive fourth network, UBS (Union Broadcasting Systems), so closely resembles the real current fourth network, then a decade from its creation, FOX.
The tale is one that seems not so outlandish any longer- Howard Beale (Peter Finch), widowed, depressed, and alcoholic network news anchorman for the UBS Evening News, has learnt that he will be fired due to low ratings. Beale's producer and friend, Max Schumacher (William Holden) informs him of this, and this seems to be the final straw for Beale, who glibly announces his impending retirement, and that he will also suicide on next week's show. Few techs in the studio are even paying attention until one of them who was freaks out. Network bigwigs freak out, yet there is never a sense of real overacting- save, perhaps for Finch's role. This is why the film is so devastating, for Chayefsky and Lumet were intimately involved with network politics from the earliest days of television, and drew from their decades of experience to couch craziness in acceptability.... If Network is not a great film it is certainly, as Lumet mantras in his commentary, a prescient one. It is also proof that, despite what naysayers and masturbatory French cineastes might think, film is a writer's medium, first and foremost, not a visual one, for Network shows that greatness is possible sans special effects and virtually no music- the film is void of a formal score. This lack, however, only heightens the realistic acidity of Chayefsky's brilliant and funny words, which transcend satire and enter reportage, at times. Just watch the scene where Schumacher finally leaves Christensen, and ask yourself how much more powerful is that scene without a swelling musical crescendo, not to mention Chayefsky's having Holden narrate his own exit, stage right? Go ahead, try to name me a film that reaches greatness in the other direction- with just special effects and music, and no screenplay of merit. Lo!
I recommend especially anyone under the age of thirty-five to watch this film, and they will see just how predictable the current lowest common denominator state of affairs, domestically and abroad, in the media and in day to day affairs, was, even decades in coming. This is because the core of a society's problems never lie with its leaders nor its media, but with its citizens. This has played out not only internationally, with the rise of terrorism, but domestically, with the mute acceptance of corruption and civil rights infringements by the scared masses, as well as a refusal by the general electorate to refuse to vote for crooks and bums for elective office. Thus, the fictive raving idiots that shouted their madness, along with Howard Beale, back then are now railing in reality, on cable tv and in the blogosphere, now. And still no one is worried, and there's no Chayefsky around to skewer the idiocy. Network exemplified what made the 1970s the last great era in American film- great writing, acting, and a deeper sense of what the art could do. Let's hope that last era is not the final one, as well.

Why this film is still relevant today
It must have been at least 20 years since this film was made and it is amazing that it is still relevant today. Director Sidney Lumet has lined up fantastic cast and found even better screenwriter that has made this movie to be one of the everlasting classics of the American cinema. Throughout the film we observe characters from the network television pushing their way around network for their personal gain. The rule of the game is "ratings" and those better be good or heads will roll. And if the american public is not watching news for its value, then what can enhance sagging ratings: scandal, popular demand or modern prophecies of the time? As news descend into entertainment value for the sake of the ratings, high level executives are too busy brokering deals: selling air time to marketing companies, terrorist groups, even communists; paying off high interest loans to foreign investors, firing anyone on their way of achieving goal of becoming financially successful. 20 years ago, Lumet told us, thru this film that rule of capitalism, democracy and american way is one way - make money. One must do whatever it takes to make that goal a reality. It is amazing how relevant this film still is today. Not much has changed at all.