Quiz Show | | Cast : | John Turturro, Ralph Fiennes | | Director : | Robert Redford | | Studio : | Hollywood Pictures | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | September 14, 1994 | | DVD Released Date : | July 01, 2003 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 21, 2005 | | Summary | Most Underrated Movie | Content
 | This could quite possibly be the most underrated movie of all time. With superb acting, a teriffic plot and unbelievable content, this truly a remarkable movie. After losing out to "Forest Gump" for the "Best Picture" Oscar, it seemed to have been lost on most people. Look no further for an engrossing movie that truly brings you into the era. This is probably John Turturro's best movie, and Ralph Fiennes really makes a name for himself. David Paymer and Paul Scofield are teriffic in their supporting roles. This story about the Quiz Show scandal in the 1950s involving "21" is as interesting and well produced movie around. The lack of any features on the DVD is disappointing, but the movie is well worth the purchase. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 01, 2005 | | Summary | Morality play par excellence | Content
| A movie like Quiz Show is entertaining on so many levels...where to begin.
The opening sequence; I don't know what it is about Bobby Darin singing Mack the Knife and the behind the scenes look at America turning on their TV's, but the opening few minutes pull you into a period of history.
From that sequence the script moves swiftly, the characters are tightly drawn, and the stage is set for a morality play asking viewers about the nature of integrity.
While all acting in this movie is outstanding, the direction almost transcends these solid performances, making the actors look like they are simply doing their job rather than carrying a story.
That said, I really enjoyed Rob Morrow, perhaps for the surprising depth of his acting ability (I didn't know he had it in him). Ralph Fiennes seems like an actor you expect greatness from (and he delivers). Hank Azaria is great. And John Turturo is outstanding.
Overall there are few movies I will watch repeatedly just to follow a sequence or hear an actor utter a few lines of dialog. This is certainly one those movies.
After A River Runs Through It and Quiz Show, you'd think Robert Redford can do no wrong. But then you watch the Horse Whisperer... |
| Rating | | | Date | May 26, 2005 | | Summary | Celebrity Submerges Respect | Content
| I just saw "Quiz Show" last night for the first time. It should have won the 1994 Academy Award for Best Picture instead of that annoying, shallow pap titled "Forrest Gump." Not only was the story and acting in "QS" much better than in "FG," it also had paid incredible attention to period detail without resorting to cheap FX gimmicks to make its point or advance the plot.
"QS" is not merely a fascinating period piece of a landmark event in recent US history, but is also very much a "man's movie"---and I don't mean some shallow, bicep-flexing, explosion-filled "action film." What I mean by "man's movie" is that "QS" does a fine job of showing how men interact with each other at all levels, personally and professionally; accurately and honestly exploring the concepts of competition, status, fame, behavior, friendship and the meaning of personal honor and compassion, when not in the presence of women. The supporting women characters in films like these, although "once removed" from the immediate action, interestingly enough, play strong, vital and highly influential roles far beyond their immediate circumstances and respective time periods. The only other film I can recall that does this as well as "QS" is the obscure 1956 Rod Serling-scripted "Patterns."
To me, Ralph Fiennes as Columbia University luminary Charles van Doren and John Turturro as blue-collar Queens resident Herb Stempel, both contestants on the rigged game show "Twenty-One," were each fascinating male character studies. Stempel was portrayed as envious and disdainful of elite "WASP" van Doren and this propelled him to expose the rigged show to the media and the federal government. After van Doren was ruined in front of the House investigating committee, Stempel, experiencing a sudden "epiphany," honestly and sincerely felt compassion for the man he previously despised and envied and indirectly helped discredit.
The van Doren character had lamented that he had, throughout his life had "risen on the wings of others," but in truth he never really had had a chance to stretch his own wings at all. Stempel and van Doren had both been considered frustrated "second raters," so to speak, in their respective worlds. Stempel was very intelligent but a working-class man who, deep down, thought himself a failure. Van Doren, who would have anywhere else been at the top of the mountain, was considered a second-rater within his own stunningly brilliant family. Going on a TV game show had been, for both of them as they saw it, a sort of once-in-a-lifetime chance to quickly and completely break out of their seemingly suffocating existences in the hope of gaining what they thought would have been some real respect (too often confused with transitory and superficial "fame.") The money they each had won was a nice benefit, but less important then the chance to somehow be truly, as it were, "somebody," completely through their own efforts. However, much like Luigi Pirandello's hapless characters in his "Six Characters in Search of an Author," van Doren and Stempel were in truth mere expedient, rootless simulacra, just passing through on the long wave of television viewer ratings.
Both men, as the scandal played itself out, soon became two of the earliest casualties of what was soon to become the relentless and short-memoried American "celebrity culture" which rewards handsomely yet punishes severely and is all too maddeningly fickle, and moreover, can have a deeply suffocating nature of its own. So many of us grab for fame as a cheap substitute for love and respect in a world around us which is even more "celebrity" dominated than it was in 1959; the ever-more pervasive and intrusive TV always raising the stakes, subtly and repeatedly telling us that deep down none of us really "measure up" to the endless parade of images of the "beautiful people and places" it relentlessly transmits, now 24 hours per day all over the planet. Friedrich Hegel had once written that what is reasonable is real. If he had experienced the history of television, and especially the 1959 quiz show scandals, he might have quickly retracted that claim.
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| Rating | | | Date | February 06, 2005 | | Summary | "Quiz Show" fall-out | Content
| I'm very thankful to have had the opportunity to again see
"Quiz Show" on 2/5/05 and re-experience the emotions I felt so many years ago when the scandal erupted. I was in my 20s, very busy raising a family and naive about the television industry. I remember having my jaw drop open like a codfish as the story unfolded in all its ugliness. What a great job Robert Redford did in capturing the drama surrounding the episode and the tragedy of ruined lives portrayed in this outstanding film; it truly deserves to be categorized as "great". While no one was punished by the judicial system, Herb and Charles' lives were ash heaps when it was over. Yes, it's a morality tale, and isn't the purpose of telling morality tales to change our evil ways?
Guess what? It changed my viewing habits forever. No more quiz shows for me from that period to today's revolting "reality" garbage dished up throughout the week. Television can either be a blessing or a curse, depending on choices. That was true back in the 50s and it's true in 2005. Is this a film worth seeing? Oh, yes, and more than once. Superb performances. What a great joy to again see the great Paul Scofield in another masterful portrayal of a real-life character and a triumph for Robert Redford. I'm hoping for a DVD version with interviews with Robert Redford and any of the real-life people portrayed in the film who are still with us to tell us how their choices affected their lives when the scandal faded with time. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 23, 2005 | | Summary | Why, oh why? | Content
| This is an utterly brilliant film, to be sure, worthy of every star or series of stars ever given in cinematic history. Its prelude, alone, is worthy of 5 stars, as are its performances, screenplay, cinematography, and striking use of the song "Mack the Knife" -- in two totally different performances.
So why do I only award it 4 stars?
A film of this caliber surely deserves more special features on its DVD release. (?) At the very least, Robert Redford should sit down and record his insights into this masterfully understated, superbly crafted, and exquistitely wrought drama. (?) Those who have seen the film are virtually begging for more, aren't we?
To be completely (and embarrasingly) honest, I only liked the film the first time I saw it, which was in the theatre when I was too young to appreciate its finer points. But I also believe its finer points defy the first viewing, as every subsequent showing of the film has uncovered a new dynamic, a new layer, a new penetrating insight. For one, I marvel at the bookending of the drama by totally different versions of "Mack the Knife" -- a song that we associate with the 50's by virtue of the famous Bobby Darrin and Louis Armstrong recorings, but that few know to have been written originally (and far more stringently) in the native German of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. The use of the song belies the filmmakers' knowledge of its incendiary message and content -- also the realization that the legendary Darrin recording superficially glosses over the bite of the original lyrics, via a TAME translation. (The story behind this is fascinating, but irrelevant.) Specifically, the opening credits are attended by the familiar, the period, the almost inane version recorded by Bobby Darrin -- but the final credits, with the ceaseless zooming in of the images of the audience, is accompanied by Lyle Lovett's far more knowing rendition: sinister, cynical and bitter.
And dare I mention the engrossing but mysterious first scene? A scene that has (at a glance) virtually nothing whatsoever to do with the plot of the film? Mira Sorvino mentions in passing that Rob Morrow has been car-shopping at a point; that is the only reference (albeit oblique) to the opening scene in the main body of the film. And yet: its exquisite disection of the 1950's in America, and the hopes, fears, insecurities, and aspirations that attended it, is shocking. Watch as the camera carresses the rampant materialism and nearly seduces the car for us. Watch as the salesman (in this film about sales pitches) never loses a beat. Watch as the carpet is pulled out from under us: Sputnik flies over, the USSR beats us into space, the camera loses control. For the first time, it shows us the *entire* field of view, rather than a coquettish close-up. It loses focus on the objective: to sell. But Mr. slick salesman doesn't: he doesn't lose a beat in tying the calamity into his pitch. This is the kind of filmmaking that all of Hollywood should aspire to. And I defy any thinking, conscientious person to watch the entire movie and return to the opening scene without seeing it as a kind of overture to the film, reducing its themes and intentions into a brief and enticing summary.
And again, I wonder: why doesn't a dumbfounding masterpiece like this not merit more in the way of commentary?
The film itself gets at least 5 stars; the by-the-numbers DVD presentation, 3-ish. |
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