Bread, Wine and Circuses ... Sandwiches, Geritol and TV Quiz Shows ...

Rating: 10/10 (1 August 2011)

The 50's had "A Face in the Crowd", the 70's "Network", and the 90's "Quiz Show", and as usual, TV-themed films carry the same premise of entertainment as their inspiration, with the same degree of cynicism. We never know as a viewer if we're accomplices or victims, it's up to us to take positions and to decide if the big TV star is one to root for or not. More than a plot device, this helps to engage us into the diabolical mechanisms that sometimes govern the modern Pandora box we -for the majority of us- grew up with.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery said that "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction". This sentence almost defines the very essence of TV. There's just something so fascinating in this little box, that converges the sights of millions of people from all the country, there's an odd equation between being on TV and being loved, as if the magnetic waves emitted by the screen filled the people's heart with a curious desire to be inside, this envy is translated into love, from the pride to know or to be close to the TV star. The producers got it right, audience wanted ordinary people to become stars, and when you have no talent in sports, or arts, the only weapon left for the schmuck is the intellect.
"Revenge of the Nerds" can be a fitting subtitle for TV Quiz Shows, and the movie opens with the unlikeliest TV star, John Turturro as a man with a "face for radio", the champion of the "Twenty One", Herbert Stempel, a Jewish New Yorker at the pinnacle of his winning streak. But the lowering ratings aren't enough to compensate the awkwardness of Stempel and the feeling that the audience wants something new gets more and more palpable. So basically the idea consists on changing the nerdie as to change a light-bulb. And in the case of Charles Van Doren, the crooked producers, Freedman and Enright, Hank Azaria and David Paymer found the mother lode. The casting of Ralph Fiennes is perfect, his juvenile smile, rosy cheeks; exude a perfume of innocence while his voice maintain a serious dignity. Fiennes as Van Doren is so appealing that it makes his decision to sell his soul even more tragic for him, and difficult for us to accept.
What would you do for TV, for fame, for money, for love? The film asks many questions in which silence can be the only non hypocritical answer. I won't extend the analysis to actual TV programs when any means justified to keep up the ratings, where at least the 50's had the decency to promote some intellectuality while today, muscles and tits replaced the brains. It could fill a whole thesis, and we already know that the majors and the sponsors always win. To make it short, let's say that the majors's cynical purpose is to sell some available brain time for the sponsors, and so-called entertainment is the hypnotic eye to let the viewer know that Geritol, is the best tonic in the world, to believe whatever they want, and the worst stuff doesn't necessarily concern the advertising department. TV got away with the scandal and this is precisely why I prefer to analyze the human aspect of the film.
"Quiz Show" is a powerful drama about the consequences of adults behaving like children, it's about dilemmas and responsibilities. Behaving like children is having everything you dreamed of, without earning it, and living in the illusion that it will last, as in the denial of the existence of justice. But justice is here, and it's incarnated by the young Congressman lawyer from Harvard, Dick Goodwyn, played by Rob Morrow, the one who smelled something fishy at the first place. I thought in the beginning that the fact that he was Jewish was irrelevant, but actually, it helped him to have more affinity with Stempel who kind of convinced him that the WASP pretty boy winning over the geeky Jewish boy is not a legend, and with Van Doren on which he developed a real fondness and a profound admiration, falling himself in the trap of a childish attitude, in the sense of unprofessional.
The characterization in "Quiz Show" is tactfully handled by Robert Redford's masterful direction. Stempel is more than a comic relief, he plays the victim with the tender flamboyance of the schmuck who still got his pride. Goodwyn is also weakened by his own affection to Van Doren, a corrupted soul whose only redeeming quality is to have inspired this friendship and more than anything, the love of his father, Mark Van Doren, the poet and the intellectual. Paul Scofield steals the movie with a nuanced but remarkable performance, as a man so convinced of the inner integrity of his son, we can't help but feel angry toward the son who broke such a noble heart. The Van Doren's tragedy is incarnated by two consecutive moments, the avalanche of applauds addressing the Committee member who wasn't fooled by Van Doren's eloquent speech, and the part that almost brought a tear to my eye, the devastation of the parents who learned that their son won't be a professor and that the "name" of the Van Dorens was tarnished or in the best case, would be forever associated to a sordid affair.
Truth triumphed, Stempel convinced that he knew the answers he pretended to ignore, the scheme was revealed, but TV got away with it, that's the show business  even Stempel felt some empathy to Van Doren, as both ultimate victims of the media, a cruel arena condemning you to be eaten by the lions, the journalists and the movie ends with smiling faces representing the audiences as the Romans who cheered for the gladiators before condemning them