I have seen this film more
than 40 years ago. What brought it back to my memory was a small note
by German director Christian Petzold on a DVD cover of another film
by Fleischer, the Jules Verne-adaptation 20000 Leagues under the
Sea (1954). He writes, “in Fleischer´s films we see often
people in front of windows in front of screens. They regard something
which is lost. Innocence, nature, vastness, beauty.” Than Petzold mentions a scene in Soylent Green where E.G.Robinson sees on
a screen images of nature and animals which are in this science
fiction dystopia already extinct. In the moment Robinson sees the
beauty on the screen he dies.
I owe Petzold´s note not
only that I rediscovered this film for myself – even more – his
note brought back a certain feeling I had for this film more than 40
years ago even though I was not able yet to express it in this
beautiful almost poetic terms.
Soylent Green is
often considered as one of the first ecological science fiction
films. It includes also one of Charlton Heston´s last great
performances like in Schaffner´s Planet of the Apes (a film
which is really missed in this retrospective) The world is already in
the last phase of it´s decay: overpopulation, dramatic lack of
enough food and water. Simple but efficient, Fleischer uses lenses
which give the film a greenish look of decay. Thorn (Charlton Heston)
is a police officer, a cynical man who tries to survive but also
tries to make his job as good as possible. His assistant ( this profession is called here “police book”) is an old Jew called
Sol (E.G. Robinson) Sol is old enough to know the world how it once
was. Terms like “police book” or “furniture” for women as
comfort slaves for rich male tenants of luxury apartments are hints
that in this dark future, most of people are reduced to functioning
objects, a hint which gets (as the film proceeds) a much more gloomy
meaning. The food companies are the power of this desolate world. A
powerful member of this company is murdered. At first it looks like a
robbery but Thorn finds out that there is more behind it and that
this victim knew the secret about the food company which produces
indefinable stuff like Soylent Green and other stuff to feed the
hungry masses. And it is Sol who discovers the horrible secret from
what this food is made of. He consults the “exchange” a kind of
library for all police books. Sol can´t deal with the truth and goes
to an institution where people who want to die get the poison
injection and a last moment of happiness. And here comes the most
intense moment of the film. Thorn finally finds his old friend, but
the old man is locked in a room and Thorn looks at him exactly like
a film projectionists from his cabin. The light is orange and on a
big screen Thorn and Sol see with tears in their eyes all the glory
of a world which is already destroyed forever. It is indeed one of
the strongest moments in Fleischer´s work and the most memorable one
in the science fiction genre in the 1970s. How extreme beauty and
extreme horror and tragedy are colliding here – that is almost
unbearable And even more important it is from a film which seemingly
never intended to be more than a genre film. But it is an idea strong
enough to carry a whole film.The images he sees are like the memories
of a dying man. Before he dies, Sol whispers something to Thorn what
we can´t understand. Later Thorn follows secretly the truck whoich transports the corps from this institution to a faraway factory.
Finally Thorn realizes the connection between funerals and food
production. We don´t know if Thorn (heavy injured at the end)
is able to persuade his superior of this secret or not. Beside the
science fiction element, the film becomes a kind of Film Noir. It is
a vision of a future with a hidden auto-genocide (like The Time
Machine or Logan´s Run), one of the many visions where
more or less big companies are representing the political power
(Alien or Blade Runner) and last but not least the film
is made in a time where something like ecological awareness began.
Well, I can´t say I am
very happy with the selection of the whole retrospective. Many films
are missing and many films I would not have chosen but Soylent
Green is film which deserves to be discovered again. Most of the
films in this retrospective are screened in 35 millimeter-prints.
Rüdiger Tomczak
Screenings:
15.02,Cinemaxx 8, 14.30
18.02, Zeughauskino, 14.00
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