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Old 05-16-2014, 07:25 PM
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Movies Soylent Green Revisited

I first saw Soylent Green on Italian television when I was a kid where it was called I Sopravissuti (The Survivors). My memories of it were vague -- Ben Hur hollering "Soylent Verde è fatto di persone," the old guy watching the movies of earth that was as he's put down -- so when it recently aired on Turner Classic Movies (PBUI) I DVRd it, looking forward mainly to hearing the famous line in English.

I was shocked at how compelling I found it. Sure, there are cheesy aspects to it (it was the early 70s, after all), but it looks hella less like a dystopic future in the light of global warming and more like pretty much the ways things are going to go. It's set in 2022 so it might be off by a decade or two, but ballpark.

Charleton's performance is better than I remembered. Like Robert Taylor, he's significantly more convincing as an embittered cynic than he ever was a noble stiff-upper lip hero or romantic lead. He's still a ham, mind you, but an entirely tolerable one.

What really blew me away, though, was the old man, whose face I had completely wrong in my memory so I was stunned to find he was Edward G. Robinson and my God, what a performance. He's warm and heartbreaking and so erudite, so unlike his iconic early gangster roles and so much like he was irl. It was his last film. He died of cancer 12 days after filming that euthanasia scene. I get choked up just thinking about it.

I wish there were a Criterion Collection version of this picture because I feel compelled to completely obsess over it.
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Old 05-16-2014, 07:55 PM
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Default Re: Soylent Green Revisited

Have a look at "Our Vines Have Tender Grapes".
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