Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
When veteran anchorman Howard Beale is forced to retire his 25-year post because of his age, he announces to viewers that he will kill himself during his farewell broadcast. Network executives rethink their decision when his fanatical tirade results in a spike in ratings.
Network is a landmark satire whose prescient skewering of television, ratings culture, and corporate dehumanization remains startlingly relevant. Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay is a firecracker of ideas and rage, earning a top Plot score. The acting is extraordinary across the board — Finch, Dunaway, Holden, and Straight all deliver career-defining (or Oscar-winning) work. Novelty is very high: the film's savage, prophetic voice is completely singular, anticipating reality TV and media spectacle decades ahead. The ending — cold, efficient corporate murder — is a brutally perfect punctuation mark on everything the film argues. Cinematography, while competent and well-executed by Gordon Willis, is the one area that, though serviceable, doesn't reach the transcendent heights of the other elements and keeps the film from a perfect sweep.