| Soylent Green | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster by John Solie | |
| Directed by | Richard Fleischer |
| Screenplay by | Stanley R. Greenberg |
| Based on | Make Room! Make Room! byHarry Harrison |
| Produced by | Walter Seltzer Russell Thacher |
| Starring | Charlton Heston Leigh Taylor-Young Chuck Connors Joseph Cotten Brock Peters Paula Kelly Edward G. Robinson |
| Cinematography | Richard H. Kline |
| Edited by | Samuel E. Beetley |
| Music by | Fred Myrow |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
|
Running time | 97 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $3.6 million (rentals)[1] |
Soylent Green is a 1973 Americandystopianthriller film directed byRichard Fleischer, and starringCharlton Heston,Leigh Taylor-Young, andEdward G. Robinson in his final film role. It is loosely based on the 1966 science-fiction novelMake Room! Make Room! byHarry Harrison, with a plot that combines elements ofscience fiction and apolice procedural. The story follows a murder investigation in a dystopian future of dying oceans and year-roundhumidity caused by thegreenhouse effect, with the resultingpollution,depleted resources,poverty, andoverpopulation.[2][3]
The film was released on April 19, 1973, byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and received mostly favorable reviews from critics, while earning $3.6 million at the box office. In 1973, it won theNebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and theSaturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film.
By 2022,[4] the cumulative effects ofoverpopulation,global warming, andpollution have causedecocide, leading to severe worldwide shortages offood,water, andhousing, bringing human civilization to the brink of collapse.[5]New York City has a population of 40 million, and only theelite can afford spacious apartments, clean water, and natural food in walled-off communities patrolled by armed guards. Their homes are fortified, with moats, security systems, and bodyguards for their tenants. Usually, they includeconcubines (who are referred to as "furniture" and have nohuman rights and are passed from one apartment owner to the next). Meanwhile, the majority live in squalor, haul water from communal spigots, and eat highly processed food wafers made by the Soylent Corporation — a large food processing firm. Their mainstay products, Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, are a staple food, and the latest product, a new, more nutritious, and flavorful wafer derived fromplankton, Soylent Green, is introduced to the populace.
NYPD Detective Robert Thorn lives in a cramped apartment with his aged co-worker and friend Sol Roth, a brilliant former college professor and police researcher (referred to as a "Book"), who helps him with his cases. Thorn is called to investigate the murder of the wealthy and influential William R. Simonson, a member of the Soylent Corporation's board, which he suspects was an assassination. With the help of Simonson's concubine Shirl, his investigation leads to a priest whom Simonson had visited shortly before his death. Due to the sanctity of the confessional, the visibly exhausted priest can only hint to Thorn at the contents of the confession. Soon after, the priest is murdered in the confessional by Tab Fielding, Simonson's former bodyguard. Under the direction of Governor Henry C. Santini, Thorn's superiors order him to end the investigation. Still, he continues. He soon becomes aware that a stalker is following him. As Thorn tries to control a violent mob during a Soylent Green shortage riot, he is attacked by the assassin who killed Simonson. The killer shoots three times at Thorn but misses, accidentally striking several innocent bystanders in the crowd. Thorn manages to locate the killer and throw him to the ground. The killer shoots Thorn in the leg before being crushed by the hydraulic shovel of a police riot-control vehicle, which continually scoops up shovelfuls of people in the crowd and swivels to dump them for disposal.
In researching the case for Thorn, Roth brings two volumes of theSoylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015–2019, taken by Thorn from Simonson's apartment, to the team of other "Books" (elderly former professors and retired judges now turned researchers) at the "Supreme Exchange". The "Books" quickly conclude from the oceanographic reports that the oceans are dying and cannot actually produce the plankton from which Soylent Green is allegedly made, thus revealing that the ingredients in Soylent Green are, in fact,human bodies. This information confirms to Roth that Simonson's murder was ordered by his fellow Soylent Corporation board members, who knew Simonson was increasingly troubled by this truth and feared he might disclose it to the public.
Shaken by the truth, Roth decides to "return to the home of God" and seeksassisted suicide at a government clinic. Thorn discovers this and rushes to stop him, but he arrives too late. Before dying, Roth whispers his discovery to Thorn, who is horrified. Thorn moves to uncover proof of crimes against humanity and to bring it to the attention of the Supreme Exchange so the case can be brought to the Council of Nations to take action.
Thorn secretly boards a waste truck transporting human bodies from the euthanasia center to a waste-disposal plant, where he witnesses human corpses instead being processed and turned into Soylent Green. Thorn is discovered but escapes. As he returns to the Supreme Exchange, he is ambushed by Fielding and his men. Finding refuge in the church where Simonson confessed, Thorn kills his attackers but is seriously wounded in a gunfight. As paramedics tend to Thorn, he urges his commanding officer, Chief Hatcher, to spread the truth. Thorn shouts to the surrounding crowd, "Soylent Green is people!"
The screenplay was based onHarry Harrison's novelMake Room! Make Room! (1966), which was set in the year 1999 with the theme of overpopulation and overuse of resources leading to increasing poverty,food shortages, andsocial disorder. Harrison was contractually denied control over the screenplay and was not told during negotiations thatMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer was buying the film rights.[6] He discussed the adaptation inOmni's Screen Flights/Screen Fantasies (1984), noting the "murder and chase sequences [and] the 'furniture' girls are not what the film is about – and are completely irrelevant" and answered his own question, "Am I pleased with the film? I would say 50 percent."[6][7]
While the book refers to "soylent steaks" (made fromsoy andlentil), it makes no reference to "Soylent Green", the processedfood rations depicted in the film. The book's title was not used for the movie on grounds that it might have confused audiences into thinking it was a big-screen version ofMake Room for Daddy.[8]
This was the 101st and final film in whichEdward G. Robinson appeared; he died ofbladder cancer on January 26, 1973, two months after the completion of filming. In his bookThe Actor's Life: Journal 1956–1976,Charlton Heston wrote, "He knew while we were shooting, though we did not, that he was terminally ill. He never missed an hour of work, nor was late to a call. He never was less than the consummate professional he had been all his life. I'm still haunted, though, by the knowledge that the very last scene he played in the picture, which he knew was the last day's acting he would ever do, was his death scene. I know why I was so overwhelmingly moved playing it with him."[9] Robinson had previously worked with Heston inThe Ten Commandments (1956) and the make-up tests forPlanet of the Apes (1968).
The film's opening sequence, depicting America becoming more crowded with a series of archive photographs set to music, was created by filmmakerCharles Braverman. The "going home" score in Solomon Roth (Robinson)'s death scene was conducted byGerald Fried and consists of the main themes fromSymphony No. 6 ("Pathétique") byPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky,Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral") byLudwig van Beethoven andPeer Gynt ("Morning Mood" and "Åse's Death") byEdvard Grieg. A custom cabinet unit of the early arcade gameComputer Space was used inSoylent Green and is considered the first appearance of avideo game in a film.[10]
The film was released on April 19, 1973, and met with mixed reactions from critics.[11]Time called it "intermittently interesting", noting that "Heston forsak[es] his granitestoicism for once" and asserting the film "will be most remembered for the last appearance of Edward G. Robinson.... In a rueful irony, his death scene, in which he is hygienically dispatched with the help of piped-in light classical music and movies of rich fields flashed before him on a towering screen, is the best in the film."[12]New York Times criticA. H. Weiler wrote, "Soylent Green projects essentially simple, muscularmelodrama a good deal more effectively than it does the potential of man's seemingly witless destruction of the Earth's resources"; Weiler concludes "Richard Fleischer's direction stresses action, not nuances of meaning or characterization. Mr. Robinson is pitiably natural as the realistic, sensitive oldster facing the futility of living in dying surroundings. But Mr. Heston is simply a rough cop chasing standard bad guys. Their 21st-century New York occasionally is frightening but it is rarely convincingly real."[11]
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "a good, solid science-fiction movie, and a little more".[13]Gene Siskel gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a silly detective yarn, full of juvenile Hollywood images. Wait 'til you see the giant snow shovel scoop the police use to round up rowdies. You may never stop laughing."[14] Arthur D. Murphy ofVariety wrote, "The somewhat plausible and proximate horrors in the story ofSoylent Green carry theRussell Thacher-Walter Seltzer production over its awkward spots to the status of a good futuristicexploitation film."[15]Charles Champlin of theLos Angeles Times called it "a clever, rough, modestly budgeted but imaginative work".[16]Penelope Gilliatt ofThe New Yorker was negative, writing, "This pompously prophetic thing of a film hasn't a brain in its beanbag. Where isdemocracy? Where is thepopular vote? Where iswomen's lib? Where are theuprising poor, who would have suspected what was happening in a moment?"[17]
OnRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71%, based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 6.30/10. The site's consensus states: "While admittedly melodramatic and uneven in spots,Soylent Green ultimately succeeds with its dark, plausible vision of a dystopian future."[18]
Soylent Green was released onCapacitance Electronic Disc byMGM/CBS Home Video and later onLaserDisc by MGM/UA in 1992 (ISBN 0-7928-1399-5,OCLC 31684584).[19] In November 2007,Warner Home Video released the film onDVD concurrent with the DVD releases of two other science fiction films:Logan's Run (1976), a film that covers similar themes of dystopia and overpopulation, andOutland (1981).[20] ABlu-ray release followed on March 29, 2011.
Topic Soylent Green, Richard Fleisher, 1973, Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Harry Harrison, Stanley R. Greenberg. Full film free download. 1h 36m 48s.
Topic Soylent Green, Richard Fleisher, 1973, Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Harry Harrison, Stanley R. Greenberg. Full film free download. 1h 36m 48s.
