Watching Network in the era of social media makes for a particularly strange experience, as the film comes across as both jaw-droppingly prophetic and amusingly quaint. Its vision of television as the source of the great decline of Western civilization was prescient commentary in 1976 that has proved to be, if anything, not radical enough (after all, screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, one of the great writers of the "Golden Era of Television," was concerned only with TV and didn't see, nor live long enough to see, where things were headed with worldwide multimedia). At the same time, the film's hellish vision of television run amok as a window into our decaying souls feels unavoidably slight in an era in which the President of the United States regularly gets online and unleashes unhinged rants, including threats to obliterate an entire civilization. Network's fictional Union Broadcasting System (UBS) ain't got nothing on the all-too-real Truth Social.

Network begins with a down-and-out network news anchor named Howard Beale (Peter Finch) being fired. He was once a popular figure of the small screen, but has since suffered sliding ratings and an increased reliance on the bottle. He is given two weeks before his "resignation," and while he is live on air, he snaps and declares that he intends to commit suicide on television in one week. The network for which he works, UBS, wants to fire him immediately, but Beale convinces them to let him go on the air once more to apologize. However, instead of apologizing, he drops the script and starts railing against the falsities of the media. He explains his earlier intention to commit public suicide by saying, "I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit." He goes on for several minutes about how everything is "bullshit," and his tirade turns into a ratings bonanza.

Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), the vice president in charge of programming, is sure that she can turn Beale's lunacy into a hit program. Her instincts see beyond the immediate crisis at hand and how it can be shaped into a program that capitalizes on Beale's ravings because, after all, isn't that what capitalism is all about? She is an opportunist, an exploiter, a visionary who understands the human appetite for chaos as long as it is held at arm's length on a screen. Early in the film, she sums up her entire character in one sentence: "All I want out of life is a 30 share and a 20 rating." Diana represents everything that is negative and soul-deadening about television; interested only in ratings and sensationalism, she has fundamentally destroyed her ability to love or feel normal human emotion. To her, everything is sentiment in an on-going script of life.

Max Schumacher (William Holden), head of the UBS news division and Beale's best friend, is against the idea of using Beale for ratings. Max is not only concerned about the dwindling reliability of the mass media in the eyes of the public, but he is convinced that Beale is mentally ill and should be treated, not exploited. For his efforts, Max is fired by Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), the "hatchet man" of CAA, the multinational conglomerate that recently bought UBS. Max is the hero of the story because he puts principles above ratings and, unlike almost every other character in the film, he can feel. Chayefsky constantly hammers away at the theme of soullessness in Network—how much you attribute the decline of modern culture to the rise of the television industry will dictate much of your reaction to the film as either brilliant social commentary or, as Pauline Kael described it, a lot of "hot air."

Network is essentially a lot of good ideas that get jumbled together. The movie is well-acted by its impressive ensemble cast, which won three of the four acting Oscars for 1976, and well-directed by Sidney Lumet, who was just off his second Best Director Oscar nomination for Dog Day Afternoon (1975). But, Chayefsky's script never allows the film to quite come together. If too many cooks spoil the broth, then too many ideas—none of which are fully developed on their own—eventually spoil Network. With a slightly less overloaded agenda and some tightening of the script, Network could have been stunning. As is, it is a diamond in the rough in need of polishing.

Moreso than any of Chayefsky's other feature screenplays, Network feels like it would have been better suited to a one-hour anthology drama. Its anti-corporate, anti-mass culture ethos is born out of those heralds 1950s dramas that allowed writers like Chayefsky, Rod Serling, and Reginald Rose to flex their ideological muscle on a new medium, as long as they culminated in "averted tragedy" (that is, offered some kind of happy ending). Writing a screenplay in Hollywood in the mid-1970s meant that Chayefsky not only didn't need to avert tragedy, but could rather lean into it. It also meant that he needed more than a central concept and a few characters to flesh it out, and that is where Network runs into trouble. Even though it brought home the third of his record-setting solo Best Screenplay Oscars (the previous two being for 1955's Marty and 1971's The Hospital), Chayefsky's script constantly feels both bloated and thin, forcing characters and drama to play primarily as symbolic elaborations of his ideological concerns.

Take, for instance, the relationship between Max and Diana. They are adversaries at work because Diana's single-minded desire to make Howard Beale into a successful TV show is one of the prime factors that gets Max fired. However, Max develops an "infatuation" with her, even though he knows she is incapable of true love or commitment. Max leaves his long-suffering wife (Beatrice Strait), who manages to get in one long, Oscar-winning monologue about Max's "last roar of passion" that leaves her in the dust. It is a good speech, but, like most of the dialogue in the film, it sounds like a speech, nothing more than one of Beale's long-winded TV rages. And, after all that, the relationship between Max and Diana is never developed to a satisfying degree. When it finally turns sour, it seems like only one more excuse for Max to expound upon Diana's "soullessness" as a result of her being "television incarnate—indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy." Too much of the film is composed of scenes where various characters yell and scream their personal ideologies, including Max's speech about the importance of being able to feel pain, Diana's talking about her shows' ratings while making love, and Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), the head of CAA, going on about how there are no more nations and cultures, only "one holistic system of systems: one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars!"

When Network was releases in the mid-1970s, television was at a point of significant evolution. Ideologically and culturally, the era of squeaky-clean '50s shows like Leave It to Beaver had been replaced with biting social satire like All in the Family. Television had already been contaminated by bringing the grisly war in Vietnam into the family living room and witnessing a Florida news anchor named Chris Chubbock shooting herself in the head during a live broadcast in July of 1974. Satellites and cable were bringing more content than ever in living rooms, which is perhaps why Chayefsky attributes the horrors on television to television itself. About that, Network has a great deal of important points to make. Some of them come across loud and clear, others get muddled, and still others are completely lost. However, the film is so replete with messages that, if some of them get lost, there are plenty more coming at you. It is ironic today to watch Beale screaming to his audience, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" because, although people may still be mad as hell (if not more), they still seem to be taking it just fine.

Copyright © 2026 James Kendrick

Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

All images copyright © The Criterion Collection