Soylent Green

Noteworthy adaptation of Harry Harrison’s novel “Make Room! Make Room!” (1966), the veteran Fleischer’s film can justifiably be considered one of the most successful and interesting examples of environmental warning films in the history of genre movies. Esthetically, the film doesn’t deviate far from 1970’s crime thrillers, but its dystopic nature combined with an ongoing diatribe against an egotistical, imbecilic human race constitutes its true beating heart (“People were always rotten. But the world was beautiful“).

On one hand, hunger dominates, smog renders the air unbreathable, and throngs of derelicts, packed liked sardines, block doorways and staircases of run-down buildings. On the other hand, a few typical fat cats, completely indifferent to the planet’s tragic condition (the sole wooded preserve in New York is contained inside a lousy greenhouse!), live like nabobs in their fortified skyscrapers furnished with every possible convenience.

Imbued with memorable scenes – rioting masses brutally scooped up by trucks outfitted with huge shovels, the moving euthanasia scene set to Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” – “Soylent Green” boasts an utterly top-notch cast: Joseph Cotten, although filling only a minor role, breathes life into an extremely significant character; Charlton Heston, five years after the magnificent “Planet of Apes” (1968), confirms that science fiction is definitely in his wheelhouse with a performance replete with verve; finally, Edward G. Robinson is unforgettable in the role of Detective Thorn’s elderly research assistant (called a “book”), embodying the dying echo of a world that no longer exists outside the disillusioned old man’s distant childhood memories.