Quiz Show

Robert Redford's exceptionally handsome and provocative Quiz Show manages a trick that few films even dare try -- to take a hard look at personal and public moral issues and still provide dazzling entertainment. Read full review

A supremely elegant and thoughtful parable. Read full review

Working from a superb script by Paul Attanasio, Redford has caught the way a show like Twenty-One offered a carny-barker version of the American Dream. Read full review

Redford has fashioned (from Paul Attanasio's brilliant screenplay) an impeccably nuanced Faustian drama which aspires to capture America's fall from grace: that point at the end of the '50s when the country first lost faith in itself. Read full review

In this brilliant depiction of the early years of TV and the phenomenal powers it asserted in breaking down the walls of America's living rooms and homogenizing our culture, director Robert Redford has crafted a superb piece of cracked Americana. Buena Vista will win heartfelt plaudits from mature audiences and, come awards season, will certainly increase its viewership through anticipated nominations. [9 Sept 1994]

Quiz Show is half-a-dozen movies, nearly all exceptional, and a lion's share assemblage of the year's top male performances. A watershed scandal revisited, it's also a riveting revenge story motivated by seething resentment. [14 Sept 1994, p.1D]

Robert Redford's intricately woven and brilliant movie Quiz Show paints a witty but poignant portrait of that tainted time on television, when Eisenhower's America lost its innocence. [15 Sept 1994]

Quiz Show, Robert Redford's strongest movie yet, has contender written all over it. Swinging from the heels, it connects solidly, powerfully and probingly with the event that triggered America's loss of postwar innocence and erosion of public trust. [16 Sept 1994, p.59]

As charted by a brilliantly incisive script by former lawyer and Washington Post film critic Paul Attanasio, the ethical crises of "Quiz Show" radiate from that anguished moment when Van Doren takes the bait. [16 Sept 1994, p.C3]

Quiz Show is one of the year's very finest films. [16 Sept 1994, p.B]

Because the filmmakers have framed this fame game so much like a conventional love story, the audience, like Goodwin, is seduced by Van Doren's pretty face. This is precisely what the film warns us to guard against, so the experience of watching Quiz Show is supercharged. As the wedge is driven in between what we think (lying is bad) and what we feel (that nice Van Doren boy can't have lied) - Redford and Attanasio make us aware of how readily we accept style divorced from substance. [16 Sept 1994, p.03]

This is still a director's movie and the real success belongs to Redford, whose overall confidence and command as a director have never been this impressive. He gets a little extra out of every scene and every performance, and he brings the film's diverse themes and story strands together with the special touch of the master filmmaker he has clearly become. [16 Sept 1994]

Robert Redford's handsome, smartly constructed new film stands likely to capture the imagination of the educated, culturally inclined public. Read full review

Redford blows the dust off a 35-year-old scandal about rigged TV quiz shows and makes it snap with up-to-the-minute relevance. Read full review

So it is an especial triumph that Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford and written by Paul Attanasio, turns that footnote of television history into a thoughtful, absorbing drama about moral ambiguity and the affability of evil. Sticking moderately close to the facts and using real names whenever possible, it succeeds by pulling back and looking at the situation through an unexpectedly subtle and wide-ranging lens. Read full review

Quiz Show is supebly shot (by Michael Ballhaus), and the acting ensemble could hardly be better..."Quiz Show is witty enough never to need to get on a soapbox to make its points. Read full review

Although the stellar contributions to this supremely intelligent film are many, there's no mistake that the presence of director Redford dominates the film. Read full review

Robert Redford has directed Quiz Show as entertainment, history, and challenge. Read full review

One of the reasons that Quiz Show is so extraordinary is because it spins a story as compelling on the personal level as on the national one. Read full review

One of those rare films that manages to be both terrifically entertaining and consistently thoughtful, it turns an apparently tame deception into a very rich metaphor. Read full review

Quiz Show becomes not just a nostalgic tale of a Camelot warrior and two Faustian eggheads, or a flashy social message drama like the "Golden Age" TV plays of that same era, but a scary precursor of our own time, when the power of TV-and its influence over national and personal life-has grown. [16 Sept 1994, p.C]

It's nice to see Scorsese making a cameo here, a kind of symbolic olive branch that may herald an overdue armistice. At last, it's OK to like Marty and Bob. [16 Sept 1994, p.53]

As taut, sleek and guiltily comfortable as the classic Chrysler automobile we see at the beginning, Quiz Show is built for entertaining road performance. Read full review

Robert Redford's best and richest directorial effort. Read full review

It's a blessedly old-fashioned, well-made and well-acted narrative. Read full review

The picture's real strength is its witty, vigorous evocation of the fifties media world. Read full review

As taut, sleek and guiltily comfortable as the classic Chrysler automobile we see at the beginning, "Quiz Show" is built for entertaining road performance. The facts (at least, the dramatically inconvenient ones) are left on the side of the road. Redford retains the emotional engine of the Van Doren affair and drives this baby all the way—presumably—to the bank. Read full review