Quiz Show (1994)
(Second Viewing, Youtube Streaming, September 2020) I first saw Quiz Show in the mid-1990s and had kept the memory of a dense, smart, compulsively watchable drama about the early days of television quiz shows. Fortunately, a second viewing sustains those high expectations. A historical fictionalization of the quiz show-fixing scandals that roiled TV networks in the 1950s, it’s a throwback to another era but with the same human flaws. Ralph Fiennes plays a telegenic academic from a respected family who comes to accept being fed the answers by the quiz show producers, while John Turturro is the less appealing participant whose volatile personality ends up being a key element in uncovering the scandal. Directed by Robert Redford, Quiz Show is a handsome, polished mid-budget production that seldom talks down to its audience—perhaps the kind of film that is endangered today. It still has a lot to say, as it grapples with the perennial sin of fraud for entertainment, and the irresistible impulse to arrange, guide and control even that’s supposed to be spontaneous. By virtue of being a sober period drama, Quiz Show hasn’t aged much in cinematographic terms, and certainly remains of interest at an age of artifice, high and low.