Soylent Green

As is often the case in Hollywood, Soleil vert was almost not made. The only use of the theme of overpopulation didn't seem sufficient to the MGM. Harry Harrisson had to fight to avoid his work being completely changed. Much later he recognised that the ideas imposed by the studio were excellent: alongside overpopulation there was the idea of the euthanasia of old people, then an even more terrifying idea: the vitamin tablets turns out to be made from corpses instead of plankton. And above all (almost at the last moment, with stock-shots chosen by the film's editor), the most famous scene, where Edward G. Robinson, before being euthanised, is shown, animal documentaries, wonderful natural landscapes, everyday images, which after 2 hours of long shots of a slum-like New York wreathed in a yellowish smog, rocked with riots that are cleared with bulldozers, take on a very moving tone: the spectator understands that all this doesn't exist anymore, that it has been destroyed by pollution and poisoning on a planetary level.