Network (1976) on Netflix
Howard Beale, the longtime anchor of the UBS evening news, learns his ratings have cost him his job. On the air he says he will kill himself on his final broadcast.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb8.0/10187,773 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Howard Beale has anchored the evening news on the Union Broadcasting System for years, and the network's ratings have slipped. Max Schumacher, his friend and the head of the news division, delivers the news that Beale has two weeks left on the air. The following night Beale tells his audience he will shoot himself on his final broadcast, and the network pulls him off the air; Schumacher argues for one last telecast so that his friend can leave with dignity. Instead of apologizing, Beale speaks plainly about what he feels, and the audience responds. Diana Christensen, the ambitious programming executive who sees counter-establishment programming as the answer to the network's problems, wants his show for herself.
Cast
- John Carpenteras George Bosch
- Ed Crowleyas Joe Donnelly
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Network (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress as Louise Schumacher with only five minutes and two seconds of screen time, the shortest Oscar-winning performance as of 2025, breaking Gloria Grahame's 1952 record for The Bad and the Beautiful; Ned Beatty's six minutes as Arthur Jensen made him the shortest nominated actor.
SPOILER
Network came two years after Christine Chubbuck, a Sarasota television news reporter, shot herself on camera on July 15, 1974. Paddy Chayefsky used the idea of a live death as the film's ending, though Dave Itzkoff's book says it remains unclear whether her case inspired him.- Peter Finch died before the 1977 ceremony; his Best Actor win as Howard Beale was the only posthumous acting Oscar until fellow Australian Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor in 2008.
- Network won three of the four acting Oscars at the 49th Academy Awards, the second of only three films ever to do so as of 2024, after A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951 and before Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2022.
- Paddy Chayefsky's casting notes for Howard Beale listed Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, James Stewart and Paul Newman; Sidney Lumet wanted Fonda, who declined the part as too "hysterical", and Stewart also turned it down over the script's strong language.
- Producers doubted Australian Peter Finch could sound American and demanded an audition; he answered, "Bugger pride. Put the script in the mail," paid his own fare to New York for a screen test, and taped himself reading The New York Times and the Herald Tribune aloud to prepare.
- Sidney Lumet wanted Vanessa Redgrave in Network, but Paddy Chayefsky, a supporter of Israel, objected to her support of the PLO; when Lumet called it blacklisting, Chayefsky replied, "Not when a Jew does it to a Gentile."
- Ned Beatty landed Arthur Jensen on Robert Altman's recommendation after the original actor failed to satisfy Lumet, and had a single night to prepare the character's four-page speech, finishing it in one day of shooting.
