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Network (1976)

Director: Sidney Lumet

Average user rating

3 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Washed-up news anchorman (Finch) flips on air, finds God, and is gleefully exploited by his TV company to boost the ratings with his epileptic evangelic revivalism. Network gives a rather old-fashioned plot the '70s treatment: the result is slick, 'adult', self-congratulatory, and almost entirely hollow. Paddy Chayefsky's entrenched but increasingly desperate script parades its middle-aged symptoms to little effect: it's ulcerous, bilious, paranoid about youth, and increasingly susceptible to fantasy. Above all, it's haunted by fear of failing powers; presumably people telling each other what lousy lays they were is to be taken as indication of the film's searing honesty. Lumet's direction does nothing to contain the sprawl, and most of the interest comes in watching such a lavishly mounted vehicle leaving the rails so spectacularly.

Author: CPe 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Gess T. Apo said...

Posted on Nov 24 2009 07:42 Your review of the film is as vacuous as the residue it apparently left behind in your mind. There is more to the movie than the most obvious aspects of a "ranting madman" being exploited for ratings and dialogue relating to the quality of sexual encounters.
Look deeper into what is present and notice the questions about the meaninglessness of man's condition and alienation from others in addition to the self. The movie illustrates the negative role that television has in causing people to detach from their own life, or at the very least, to judge their life by false standards presented via programming. It isn't called programming for no reason.
I have the feeling that CPe was uncomfortable w/various ideas presented in the movie and wrote the above asinine review in a fit of self-loathing.

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Rohne Hill said...

Posted on Sep 03 2009 23:44 I'm sure no one doubts some of the film's points and tirades, but that's all undercut by it being overwritten (Very different to literate), direly pretentious and embarassingly selfreflexive.
I watched in horror as it descended into an uneven and oft ridulous "satire".
All the of indulgences of Godard without any of the charm.
Much like Equus a year later Lumet lets the whole thing run rampant.
Still me favourite horror movie though...

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Katherine said...

Posted on Aug 24 2007 00:10 This is one of the greatest movies ever made. The fear is in the direction of the world in general and TV in particular. Paddy C was right on the money. The dialogue is fantastic and literate (also funny) and there isn't a bad actor in the entire film. Don't be afraid to watch it.

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