Quiz Show Director: Robert Redford

Rip It Up, Issue 210, 1 February 1995, Page 38

Quiz Show Director: Robert Redford

A few years back, American mainstream cinema was obsessed with exorcising the shame and guilt that was the Vietnam War. Now it seems we should be equally horrified by an expose of corruption in television quiz shows of the 5Qs. While the shows are a curious phenomenon, is it at all surprising some were quite cynically ‘rigged’ for entertainment value, at the dictate of ratings and an unscrupulous sponsor (here played by a bristling Martin Scorsese)? Indeed,

it’s an indication of the tremendous naivety of Eisenhower’s America that they were taken so seriously anyway. Quiz Show is a worthy enough film, although Redford as director manages more of a stinging critique of Yankee materialism in a minute-long scene in a Chrysler showroom than he does in the remaining 130 odd minutes of the movie. Apart from a virtuoso performance from John Turturro, as the Jewish nerd Quiz-King deposed by the charm-schooled Ralph Fiennes, the pleasures are fleeting: Paul Schofield in his first film role for decades, Barry Levinson as a egregious talk-show host and the snappy recreation of its period.

WILLIAM DART