‘Quiz Show’: No Easy Answers

In “Quiz Show,” a congressional investigator (Rob Morrow) looking into the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s forces prominent and popular intellectual Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) to face the agonizing truth--that he cheated for fame and fortune. (Rated PG-13)

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Younger children found this movie to be a long, slow slog through the subtle ethical dilemmas of a bygone era. The action is all mental, moral and emotional. Rather than fistfights, high-tech weaponry or rolls in the hay, it’s embellished by the big vocabulary words and arcane historical trivia that made up the old-fashioned quiz shows and the Van Doren family gatherings.

But the over-12 set found it more of an interesting jog through recent history and seemed to appreciate the lesson about truth-telling.

“I thought it was a pretty good movie,” said Pablo Pappano, 13. “Some kids might not like it. It might be kind of slow for them because it doesn’t have a lot of action, but still it’s an interesting part of history, and I think it should be shown.”

His brother Carlo, 8, acted out his opinion with one thumb up and one down.

“It was too slow. They said words I didn’t understand,” he explained, but added, “I liked it when (Van Doren) went on a winning streak, and I liked it sort of when he lost. I think he won too many times.”

Summer Chaldu, 12, definitely thumbed it down.

“It was kind of long,” she said. “I wouldn’t tell somebody to go see it. It’s not really boring, but nothing kept happening, so I wasn’t really entertained.”

The plot, highlighting complex class and ethnic differences, follows the handsome Van Doren as he is first tricked, then seduced, into accepting the answers before appearing on the game show “Twenty-One.” Tipped off by a resentful loser, Herbert Stempel, the investigator and Harvard graduate Richard Goodwin hopes to bring down the television executives and their sponsor, Geritol, for deliberately deceiving the viewers. Instead, the focus turns to Van Doren, a professor of literature at Columbia University, who is forced to confess in public.

Most kids thought the movie made too much of the cheating scandal. Summer said she agreed with the television executive who told Congress that the hoax was just show biz and that no one was really hurt in the end.

Pablo said he didn’t think the contestants should have been given the answers, a now forbidden practice, but he was less shocked than the public seemed to be in the movie.

“It came as a shock to a lot of people who lived in that era because you didn’t really hear a lot about that stuff.”

To him, the overriding moral had less to do with television’s cheating the public than with Van Doren’s having to live with his conscience.

Pablo was most impressed with the scene in which Goodwin confronts Van Doren with a subpoena to testify and “the line that when you lie, the hardest thing about it is that you have to live with yourself. I thought that was the best line in the movie. I think it was really eating at him,” he said.

He also liked Van Doren’s father. Despite their competitive relationship, Pablo noticed the father, as well as the investigator, urged Van Doren to tell the truth.

While his brother could clearly label the good guys (Goodwin) and the bad guys (television executives), Pablo saw good and bad in all camps and in most individual characters. While some Congressmen were portrayed as morally blind backslappers who could only praise Van Doren for his confession, Pablo quoted another panel member whose statement brought applause from the gallery: “I have to disagree with my colleagues that, for a man of your age and intelligence, telling the truth shouldn’t need to be commended.”

On the lighter side, Pablo said he appreciated seeing how the ‘50s looked. He learned how wildly popular the quiz shows were back then, and he enjoyed the period sets and costumes.

“They wore suits,” he said with surprise. “It was really nice how they dressed and how their hairstyle was.”