My Robert Altman Review Thread [Archive]

PHOENIX74

10-06-22, 01:12 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/cLPm1NxF/the-player.jpg

The Player - 1992

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Michael Tolkin (based on his novel)

Starring Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward
Whoopi Goldberg & Peter Gallagher

This review contains spoilers

In The Graduate, Part II Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross would be back as Ben and Elaine - married and living together with Anne Bancroft's Mrs Robinson, who has had a stroke. Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry manages to insert Julia Roberts into his pitch, as the couple's daughter. It's 1992, and Julia Roberts is somehow being finagled into everybody's pitch in The Player - a watershed film for Robert Altman who had spent over a decade in big budget/big movie exile after a series of films that lacked commercial appeal. It must have seemed especially sweet that this popular success set about critiquing the Hollywood process - whereupon profit always seems to come at the expense of quality storytelling and novel ideas. It's a film that is absolutely as relevant today as it was back in the early 1990s.

It opens with a bravura 8 minute shot that zooms out from a painting, out of an office and through studio streets, stopping at intervals at the window to the office of Tim Robbin's Griffin Mill. Mill is an executive who spends his days listening to screenwriters pitch ideas to him, a job that puts him at odds with the artists of the filmmaking crowd - out of the thousands he listens to he can only greenlight but a few - so he'll rarely get back to many hopefuls out there who believe they have a great idea. One of these hopefuls is sending postcards to Griffin Mill, with spiteful death threats written on them. Under job pressure from newcomer Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) a stressed Mill hunts down the most likely suspect, David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio) after speaking with his girlfriend June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi). Mill and Kahane fight, and in a fit of rage Mill kills what turns out to be the wrong man.

It's the metaphorical battle between the creative and commercial, and later in the film a pitch is made to Griffin for a film called Habeas Corpus that will tell us in a somewhat comedic fashion who usually wins these battles - with even a screenwriter (played wonderfully by Richard E. Grant) swayed by avarice and gladly stepping all over his own artistic integrity in the end. Director Robert Altman points his finger at the greed responsible for the decay of soulful righteousness in the movie business. Griffin Mill is a sympathetic figure amongst all of this however - an especially difficult job for Tim Robbins to pull off. In this film it's not the person - it's the job. Intelligent, softly-spoken, good-natured and thoughtful, but also ruthless, he's no saint and he is guilty of murder but somehow we're always on his side. Robbins had shaken off appearances in horrible films such as Howard the Duck to appear in Jacob's Ladder (a critical, but not a financial success) and Bob Roberts (which he also wrote and directed) just before really making his mark here.

Griffin will go on to court June, which does himself no favours inasmuch as how guilty it makes him look - the police (led by Whoopi Goldberg as Detective Avery) are suspicious, but industry insider Walter Stuckel (Fred Ward) is looking out for him. Surrounding all of this is the glamour and heady glitz of Hollywood - the celebrity cameos in this film are so numerous that it wouldn't be possible to mention them all here. Cher, Nick Nolte, Burt Reynolds, Andie MacDowell, Rod Steiger, Jeff Goldblum and Jack Lemmon all make an appearance, amongst many, many more. It gives the film a heightened sense of reality, not to mention that it's simply enjoyable to spot these faces in the crowd as if we're amongst all the celebrities - living vicariously through Griffin Mill. These stars were generous enough with their time to appear for little to no pay, probably because Altman, a popular figure as far as actors were concerned, was directing. Late in the film the 'movie within a movie' Habeas Corpus features Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, Peter Falk and Louise Fletcher.

Altman would be nominated for an Oscar for directing this film, but surprisingly the film itself wasn't nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. He does a tremendous job, and I think there could have been nobody better at the helm of this particular film - Altman was "anti-Hollywood" and a non-conformist, a person this film really needed to guide the way. Geraldine Peroni was nominated for editing the film, and I have to remark that the editing in The Player is indeed exceptional, especially in a transitional sense - giving greater impact to foreshadowing and the multi-layered humour in the movie. It would be her only Oscar nomination, despite her putting together Brokeback Mountain. Cinematographer Jean Lépine was surprisingly left out of consideration, but perhaps I'm focusing too intently on that opening shot, which must have been horrendously difficult to rehearse and get just right (I think 15 takes were shot, with the 10th being used in the finished film.) I recognize Thomas Newman's score nowadays as having that kind of American Beauty signature - along with, in this case, small samples of the kind of music older films once had - sometimes sounding like two tunes, one layered over the top of the other.

Screenwriter Michael Tolkin was basing this on his own novel, first published in 1988, and was generous in allowing changes to be made although for the most part it follows along fairly true to the original source. In the novel Mill is less sympathetic, and of course readers are allowed into the main character's head (I hear he has a contempt for cinephiles!) His Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay rounded out The Player's three nomination, Tolkin losing to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's adaptation of Howard's End. Robert Altman ended up losing to Clint Eastwood, who directed Unforgiven, and Geraldine Peroni to Joel Cox who edited that same Eastwood film, which probably would still have beat The Player for Best Picture if it had been nominated. The nominations as a whole were good for Robert Altman however, giving him long overdue recognition and the impetus to write and direct Short Cuts. The Player was an all-round success, faring well at the box office as well.

What I especially enjoyed in The Player were the references to certain films themselves. Mills initially meets David Kahane at a showing of Bicycle Thieves* - my favourite foreign language movie of all time. A detective played by Lyle Lovett talks about seeing Tod Browning's Freaks. The long opening shots of Absolute Beginners and Touch of Evil are discussed (during the long opening shot of this movie - in a very clever way, this film is referencing itself.) Posters for the likes of Casablanca and King Kong adorn walls. Films like D.O.A. are discussed and the likes of Sunset Blvd. are cleverly alluded to ("Anybody know who Joe Gillis is?") Like the celebrity cameos, it would be difficult to recall all of them here - but most of them are films I love very much, and they obviously also mean a lot to the filmmakers. They would also have known how much film lovers would enjoy seeing and hearing about all these references to their favourite films. It all adds to an already enjoyable story that has a mix of black comedy and film noir.

When the ending rolls up, I'm very much reminded of Adaptation, a film that would come along a decade later. Adaptation references it's own making, and in a sense so does The Player - The postcard sender calls Griffin Mill again, and gives him a pitch for a film which is basically everything that has happened so far - calling his film "The Player", and as long as Mill greenlights it, it will have a happy ending, which this film has. It's one of the more satisfying endings I've seen in mainstream moviemaking, and ties up the film very neatly (apparently this ending was Tim Robbins' idea.) It's the kind of film where the humour is sly, and where I don't laugh out loud but watch with a grin on my face - because I just know that not only is this silliness actually close to what Hollywood is really like, but in some cases it's probably even worse - and Robert Altman has said as much in interviews. It's one of the more interesting films to learn about, as there's always some new inside joke or cameo to discover, but it's story is just as engaging by itself. Before seeing it, I'd always assumed that it was a square-on comedy - but it's a lot more than that. The satire is more straight-faced than I thought it would be.

I haven't seen nearly enough Robert Altman films - but what I have seen I have a deep appreciation for, especially McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us and Brewster McCloud. I'll add The Player to that list, for there are many different ways to enjoy watching this again - from admiring it from a technical and filmmaking standpoint, noticing new little details and cameos in the background and just watching to enjoy the story. Altman hasn't created something here that's mean-spirited or depressing, instead he lets us be seduced by what is ever so seductive about Hollywood - giving us glimpses inside and showing us why we should all admit to ourselves that the machine cranking out soulless films for mass consumption are part of an obsessive quest to give "the audience" exactly what they want. At one stage Larry Levy ponders leaving the screenwriter out of the process altogether. It's a democratic process, and we vote with our money. If we want Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis with a happy ending then why even bother making an artistic statement? It makes so much sense that a producer kills a writer in this film, before getting his happy ending - something even studio executives watching the film must have got.

4

* A producer watching dailies thought that Altman and co had made Bicycle Thieves as a 'film within a film' - having never heard of it.

PHOENIX74

10-06-22, 01:14 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/qMbCWQN8/nash.jpg

Nashville - 1975

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Joan Tewkesbury

Starring Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Timothy Brown
Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn
Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, David Hayward, Michael Murphy, Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel
Cristina Raines, Bert Remsen, Lily Tomlin, Gwen Welles & Keenan Wynn

Something I've become aware of lately is the fact that some films that seem to have been intricately constructed and those full of meaningful interpretative twists and turns are often constructed ad-hoc, which seems to point to the fact that a filmmaker's subconscious can be more powerful than any attempt to consciously create an artwork that means something in a deep sense. When Robert Altman's Nashville came to an end my mind was working overtime, for it's a film that seems to be saying a lot - and one that invites interpretation - so I was surprised to learn that Altman made it without having any of that on his mind. He set 24 characters up (unusual in itself for the sheer size of ensemble) - ones who would travail along this story in Nashville that involved music and politics - and let the actors play their characters freely, with specific events as a guideline. What comes out of it is as if a prism has been held up, and this story has delineated everything you could possibly say about American culture, celebrity, governance, people and history. Because of that, Nashville is considered in many circles as one of the greatest films ever made.

The film starts in a recording session, where country & western singer Haven Hamilton (played by Henry Gibson, who I've enjoyed watching in such films as The 'Burbs as the elder Klopek living next door to a skittish Tom Hanks) is recording a song. Watching on is Opal (played by Charlie Chaplin's daughter, Geraldine Chaplin) - a documentarian from England, Lady Pearl (played by Barbara Baxley) his companion, who has a John and Bobby Kennedy fixation, and his son Bud Hamilton (played by Dave Peel) who is softly spoken and reserved. Through the film we also meet Mr. Green (played by an ageing Keenan Wynn) who is preoccupied by his wife, who is in hospital and dying, his niece Martha (played by Robert Altman regular Shelley Duvall) who has changed her name to 'L.A. Jean', Delbert "Del" Reese (played by Ned Beatty), who is politically connected and has money, his wife Linnea Reese (played by Lily Tomlin) who is a gospel singer and raises two deaf children. Arriving at a Nashville airport is country and western star Barbara Jean (played by Ronee Blakley - most recognizable to me as Mrs. Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street) and among those waiting for her is a folk trio, Bill, Mary and Tom (played by Allan F. Nicholls, Cristina Raines and Keith Carradine) plus the man who is to be their driver, Norman (played by David Arkin).

Barbara Jean faints at the airport, and is taken to the same hospital as Mr. Green's wife by her husband and manager, Barnett (played by Allen Garfield) - those who follow along include Pfc. Glenn Kelly (played by Scott Glenn) who is a Vietnam war veteran. Replacing her at the Grand Old Oprey is country and western star, as well as Jean's rival, Connie White (Karen Black). Several characters often make their presence felt along the fringes of the goings on these people drive forward, and they include Sueleen Gay (played by Gwen Welles) - someone who has singing aspirations, but can't sing, Wade Cooley (played by Robert DoQui) - a cook who looks out for Sueleen and tries to protect her from being exploited, Winifred (played by Barbara Harris) a middle-aged woman who also has singing aspirations, despite her ragged appearance, and her husband, Star (played by Bert Remsen) who spends most of the film chasing after her. Not mentioned yet are Tommy Brown (played by Timothy Brown) - a rare African-American country singer, the Tricycle Man (played by Jeff Goldblum) - a magician who never speaks, Kenny Frasier (played by David Hayward) - a loner who carries a violin case around with him, and John Triplette (played by Michael Murphy) - a consultant for the presidential campaign of Hal Phillip Walker (voiced by Thomas Hal Phillips) - it's Walker's presidential campaign that knits the film together, and you often hear parts of his various speeches. Elliott Gould and Julie Christie appear briefly as themselves.

The fact that the film is split fairly evenly between these 24 characters is what makes it so unique, and these characters do things which often overlap with each other. Various recording sessions, concerts, performances and political rallies sees them moving from place to place - having discussions and running into each other. Politics, music and celebrity are the main issues the film revolves around, but it does this in a way that's both complex and captivatingly simple. Barbara Jean battles a nervous breakdown as Opal tries to record interviews and Delbert along with John Triplette organises a rally for Walker. Through all of this we eavesdrop on various conversations and make observations. Keith Carradine's Tom, meanwhile, beds a variety of the female characters while remaining emotionally distant from everyone. Sueleen Gay is roped into appearing at a strip club when all she wants is to do sing, which she can't and as such never will - and all the characters end up congregating together at the political rally where the film's denouement takes place with a very dramatic event which ties everything we've seen together into a meaningful and tragic way. It makes great use of the music, which ranges from great to awful in a very realistic and believable way.

The music was, very surprisingly, composed by the actors themselves, usually the ones who end up singing what they've composed. In this way, Carradine managed to garner an Oscar from the only time he was nominated for one - winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I'm Easy" in 1976. The film did end up getting nominated for Best Picture (the year One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest won, competing with Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2276888#post2276888) and Barry Lyndon) with both Lily Tomlin and Ronee Blakley both being nominated for Best Supporting Actress. I find most of the performances in the film fairly even, but perhaps Blakley and Tomlin's did nudge ahead of the rest slightly. Dealing with a breakdown, having a loveless affair and looking after special needs kids brought out more emotion and complexity than other actors had to dig up. I enjoyed watching the entire ensemble, especially Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall after seeing them both as a couple in Altman's Thieves Like Us - making their brief union together in this something of a reunion. The singing from Carradine and Blekley was great, and I enjoyed it very much.

The story was pretty much mapped out by Joan Tewkesbury (who also had a hand in writing the screenplay for Thieves Like Us) after Altman sent her to Nashville to come up with ideas - many events, for example the accident on the freeway, actually happened to her while she was there. The dialogue itself was left up the the actors. You can hear Tewkesbury's voice when Tom talks to his lover on the phone, and again when Kenny Frasier talks to his mother on the phone. This method, and the way Robert Altman directed the film, was on a level of sublime filmmaking - and I would have liked to have seen him win the Oscar for Best Director he was nominated for, but this was the year of Milos Forman and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Robert Altman is one of my friend's number one favourite filmmakers, and I've seen many films of his that I rate very highly - one of the films of his I like the most, Brewster McCloud, has a very similar feel to Nashville in style, and another, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is without peer. He had a truly great decade in the 1970s, and came back into the mainstream in the 1990s with The Player (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2294107#post2294107). Those films of his I haven't seen, I look forward to seeing very much. Altman has said that Nashville was the first film of his in which he had 100% creative control.

Director of Photography Paul Lohmann handled the cinematography, but this film has the feel of one that isn't composed of many carefully mapped out shots - it has more of a documentary feel, with the camera capturing the most important of what is sometimes several events happening at the same time. There are sometimes interesting things going on in the background of shots, and a lot to take in through the film's packed 160 minute running time. It's said that the initial cut of the film ran much longer, and initially consideration was given to releasing Nashville as two or three films - but Altman has at times contradicted this. I can imagine that there was a lot of footage shot, but that there's a lot of overlap, with various characters performing the same events in different ways. Lohmann was cinematographer on Altman film California Split, but he wasn't a regular who teamed with the filmmaker - he also ended up as DOP on a couple of 1970s Mel Brooks films. Musically, Richard Baskin ended up supervising what the various actors didn't compose - he can be seen at the start of the film as piano player "Frog", who Haven Hamilton dismisses. Musically, Nashville is a very enjoyable film.

So, overall the impression I get is a film that was heavily influenced by the spate of assassinations blighting the American political scene at the time, the war in Vietnam, the political convulsions which Richard Nixon was sending through the entire country all mixed up into a music scene which had at it's time a few epicenters - Nashville being one. The scene in Nashville would have had patriotic overtones, as we see in the film's first scene, but also will have commented on and influenced American culture as a whole. Focusing on a presidential campaign in Nashville combined everything, and the unpredictable results of letting the actors guide themselves produced off-the-cuff lines that are revealing and interesting. Fed into that is the obviously scripted words of candidate Hal Phillip Walker - a populist telling the average American what he or she wants to hear. There are no overt comments overall, with the person who watches it left to put all of the pieces together as they listen to Barbara Harris sing Caradine's "It Don't Worry Me" - but there's a feeling of unease - and a feeling that nobody really controls or guides this cultural synergy - with music, advertising and our fellow man both influencing or inhibiting the direction the nation as a whole takes - but where one person alone can never make a difference, unless it's the assassin.

I had many different ideas about what Nashville was about, and as a whole it's a very stimulating film, along with being enjoyable to watch and listen to. The counterculture revolution of the 1960s had subsided, and what seems most noticeable about this mid-70s period, apart from it's cynicism, is the feeling that chaos is all that really rules, and it's given free reign in a cinematic kind of sense here. When characters in the film are superficial, it stands out from our point of view because we can see what's happening from every vantage point - and it's often one person's vanity that blinds them to what's really going on in a larger context. It's an amazing film because it's more visible with this kind of filmmaking, and anything more structured doesn't resemble how the world really works. For me, it's also very interesting to watch Kenny Frasier make his way through the film with his violin case - he's one person who's not at ease, but at the same time exhibiting no external sense of conflict. He's not influencing anyone, and not being influenced. He's not a part of this large co-functioning community at all - but simply the mystery at the heart of this American heartland.

On the film's surface however, it's not so heavy or intricate, but a lot of fun, and a very funny film with something amusing happening all the time. No character (except Tom perhaps) is above being shown up as a boob or the butt of some joke which takes away his or her dignity, because that's also what life is about, especially in a Robert Altman film. It thrills us with the unexpected, such as when Winifred reveals at the end just how well she can sing and how adept she ends up being in pacifying the crowd with her song. It's a little unnerving, how quickly everything reverts back to normality, but that's humanity as a whole - as resilient as we are - in spite of our lesser virtues. I don't know if Altman planned on capturing as much of us, and of American culture, as he did, but obviously this film has a lot to say - even though much of what the director had to say he ended up capturing subconsciously, guided by the chaotic events that occurred as his screenwriter travelled through Nashville to try and take the city on and get a feel for it. "The damndest thing you ever saw." That's the best the publicity people could get to a functioning tagline - and it is like that. Another unique film from the 1970s that was of it's time and place and of it's artist - the incomparable Robert Altman.

4.5

StuSmallz

10-06-22, 01:29 AM

[CENTER]https://i.postimg.cc/cLPm1NxF/the-player.jpgThat's funny you post this today, since I just saw some people talking about it in a Discord server I'm in just now; is it okay with you if I share this with then, Phoenix?

PHOENIX74

10-06-22, 10:41 PM

That's funny you post this today, since I just saw some people talking about it in a Discord server I'm in just now; is it okay with you if I share this with then, Phoenix?

Sure, it's okay to share any reviews I post - I hope it's not to late, or else you did it anyway.

PHOENIX74

10-07-22, 11:52 PM

Well, I'd like to add any short films a director has made on his way, through his career, if I can - good or bad. This short film, The Dirty Look, was made by Altman as part of a series of short films he made for the Calvin Company - a Kansas City, Missouri-based advertising, educational and industrial film production company.

THE DIRTY LOOK (1954)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPYlB1emQGg

Here's another Calvin Company short Altman made. All up, he made 65 of them (obviously I won't include them all) and this is where he honed his filmmaking skills and gained much-needed experience. They're typical stuff, but I find it interesting how he improved as he went along - this is from 1955, and is about road safety.

THE PERFECT CRIME (1955)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic8CFuGYsYY

PHOENIX74

10-08-22, 04:42 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/9XNWhtfS/the-james-dean-story-movie-poster.jpg

The James Dean Story - 1957

Directed by Robert Altman & George W. George

Written by Stewart Stern

Narrated by Martin Gabel

Featuring James Dean, Charles Dean, Emma Dean, Lew Bracker, Marvin Carter, Patsy D'Amore & Louis de Liso

On September 30, 1955 actor James Dean died in an automobile crash in California - an actor of note already, despite only appearing in a handful of films with occasional appearances on television. His untimely death seems to have set off an even greater wave of fandom and devotion, with a generation wondering "what could have been" if this man, noted for his rebellious nature, had lived longer. The James Dean Story tells of his life through still photography, interviews with friends and relatives, a rare recording of Dean with his family, and an outtake from East of Eden - it purports to be a completely new and different kind of documentary, but the film's initial promises don't live up to anything astonishing - and in the end the feature-length documentary feels a little run-of-the-mill. It may have felt more radical back in it's day.

The film takes off with footage from the premiere of Giant, with celebrities and fans rejoycing at the gala event - James Dean already long gone. We then go back to his birth, the death of his mother at a young age, and his youth in the town of Fairmount, Indiana. We talk to his employers, teachers, family, fraternity brothers and people who worked at the restaurants and bars he liked to frequent. Through many still photographs we learn of his quietness and solitude. His constant self-questioning. His ambition and his first attempts at success on the stage - where he'd usually clash with directors. We hear about his going to New York, and then west to Hollywood where he managed to snare his first big role in East of Eden, with success following and his further roles in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. We're left with the impression that he was just discovering himself, and some peace when he died - never having married, or fully becoming his own person.

Narrator Martin Gabel has the right kind of deep-voiced tone, and intones Stewart Stern's heavy proclamations of the man's inner torment and genius with a little hyperbole and exaggeration - but this was fairly common to everything associated with James Dean, who quickly took on the status of icon after his death. It's the more personal discoveries that are more interesting, such as when we learn about an acting teacher presented with an orchid, which Dean went on to paint - he gave this painting to the teacher so that her orchid could live on forever, and she's treasured Dean's painting ever since. Fraternity brothers comment on his near $50 of outstanding dues, which "quite typically" they say he never paid. He could be troublesome, and the confines of a fraternity saw him fight his way out of it. It sounds like nobody ever really got too close to the man, who feared if someone did they'd not like what they found. Letters to his young cousin show a caring man who knew the value of what's beautiful and lasting.

This feature-length production happens to be one of Robert Altman's earliest directing efforts - sharing a credit here after directing his first feature, The Delinquents as a man for hire, well used to directing public service announcements, industrial films and short documentaries. Altman seems content to gain a mastery of the art of filmmaking, and slowly but surely gained confidence and expertise, with small artistic flourishes becoming more common as he went along. Altman seems to already have a fascination with people and their quirks, encouraging people to fully express them at every opportunity. Altman was about to embark on a long sojourn to television, helming some Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes and many other varied programs. This period of Altman's career would last 10 years, when in 1967 he directed the moon-mission film, Countdown. The James Dean Story marks a crude, but significant and noteworthy, early credit for Altman in his early 30s.

As a whole I thought the documentary was okay, and I genuinely came away from it feeling as if I knew James Dean a little more intimately. There are a number of coups as far as interviews go, with people who really knew him, instead of people just on the periphery. Unfortunately, with a man like James Dean, there were quite a few people only on the periphery of his life, so even girlfriends and fraternity brothers never got to be close to him. There's a good load of stills, and he seemed to be a very photograph-happy man - and this is what the documentary is commending itself for I think - being an early documentary that used this kind of story-by-stills framework. It's something we're well used to now. All throughout we hear from people who knew him, and our God-like narrator preserving for himself judgement - at times going a little too deep into his psychoanalysis, and pronouncing verdicts nobody can really claim to be written in stone. Still, for James Dean fans it will have been something, and would have given them something more than the three films he's known for. There's only so much mythologizing can do though, before even that has reached it's outer limits.

The film sadly ends as it must - and one of the last clips we see is Dean's Public Service Announcement for Road Safety. James Dean always did seem to be in a hurry - success in good time would never do, and he seems to have raced through life as if he knew it wouldn't last long. On the one hand, you could see this film as exploiting his death, but in the end it seems more that this film is genuinely buying into the fact that this man deserved a kind of filmic eulogy in keeping with who he was. In it's day, this might have been a really great watch. It has dated a little in the interim, but I've seen much that is far worse.

3

PHOENIX74

10-08-22, 07:40 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/k47Z4D5p/the-delinquents.jpg

The Delinquents - 1957

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Robert Altman

Starring Tom Laughlin, Peter Miller, Richard Bakalyan & Rosemary Howard

Real juvenile delinquents always have the advantage of being able to go all the way - swearing, sexually harassing and generally being as bad as you can be - with nobody to slap a ratings board 'X' on them. Delinquents in film are nasty - but cleaner. After a number of years writing and directing films for the Calvin Company, Robert Altman was hired by Kansas City businessman Elmer Rhoden Jr. to create a feature-length film about juvenile delinquency - an exploitation film that would end up posing as a community project that would be in his area of specialization. The difference would be that this would be Altman's first feature-length film - one that would get him noticed by Alfred Hitchcock (the question begs, what was Hitch watching this film for?) and as such get a new stage in his career underway. The Delinquents isn't a bad film per say, but it's focus and it's aims limit it in scope, and as such it's only really of interest as this famous director's first film.

The film involves a couple of good kids - Scotty White (Tom Laughlin - making his feature-film debut) and his girlfriend Janice Wilson (Rosemary Howard) whose father thinks she's too young, at 17, to date one boy exclusively. Scotty comes across a group of young troublemakers, who have been introduced to us in the film's prologue. Bill Cholly (Peter Miller) and Eddy (Richard Bakalyan) are the gang's nominal leaders, and when they learn about Scotty's problem Cholly tells him he'd be glad to pick his girlfriend up for him, pretending to be another suitor. They invite both Scotty and Janice to a party they're having at a deserted house they've scouted out, but when the police arrive after Scotty and Janice leave, Scotty is blamed, and the gang decides to pay him back. Picking him up off the street, they take him to a gang leader's house, get him drunk, and take him to a service station robbery. To keep Scotty quiet, Cholly has his girlfriend picked up and held hostage, setting the scene for a battle between Scotty and Cholly where much is at stake.

Really, for the kind of film this is, it's not bad. Altman wanted this to be a real film, and he organized it thus, employing many of his Calvin Company cohorts as crew. Charles Paddock, who had worked with Altman on many of his CC short films served as director of photography. Chet Allen, Altman's brother in law and another frequent collaborator, was art director. Altman used many family members as part of his team - even including his eight-year-old daughter as one of the cast, along with his wife. There is a feeling of technical accomplishment about it that you wouldn't expect for a film of this budget - $63 thousand. The film's post-production and editing were done under professional standards in California (this was stipulated in Altman's contract) with Altman and assistant Reza Badiyi cutting it with Helene Turner. Noted sound editor and Oscar nominee Fred J. Brown contributed the sound effects. It all comes together as something slick, but all up it's still only one of those films about juvenile delinquency we saw a lot of in the 1950s.

The film starts on a controversial note, with a voice-over that was added by United Artists after they purchased the film for $150,000 - on the lookout for teenage exploitation fare. It gives the film a feel of "one of those" educational films instead of the professional, "real film" feel it would have otherwise had. It is a shame, because the film starts off in a manner that's very modern - it has a prologue, and then credits running over the teens driving in the busy streets. It all looks really nice - but that voice-over doesn't belong. It talks about "violence and immorality" and "spiritual values" telling us that this film is a cry from the delinquents to us all, about their attempt to find a place for themselves in this busy world. Of course, Altman was furious about this bit of tampering. It doesn't really amount to much now though, for those who have the ability to do a bit of research and find out that this voice-over wasn't meant to be there.

The acting isn't bad - certainly not as bad as you'd be expecting to see in a cheap teenage exploitation feature. Altman often found himself experimenting with what would be his signature style - telling the teens in the party scene to just go and party as if they were at the greatest party they'd ever been to in their lives. He'd then go through the house, room to room, and not tell the cast if he were recording them or not - trying to capture them as naturally as was possible. It's nice to see a little more of the filmmaker that would be in such an early film as this. Most, if not all, of the interiors were filmed at real locations inside real houses - and it included a real police station. He also used real police officers in the film, a method later favoured by the likes of Alexander Payne and others. He'd written the screenplay in a matter of days, and filmed all of the material he needed inside of three weeks. It all gels well together, and it appears that everyone working towards the end goal were really genuine.

In spite of all of that, this isn't exactly The Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption. It's not Nashville or M*A*S*H either. It can be gripping at times, especially as our sympathies are with Scotty White and his girlfriend - the cast perform well enough to pull us in, and the story is tight and easy to follow. There's just not much here beyond an 'episode' - a story you'd be much more likely to see on television. The stakes are personal, and the message plain and simple. The Delinquents is no artistic statement, and the only inspiration to be gleaned comes from the can-do attitude of the filmmaking itself, which isn't immediately apparent but has to be researched. I don't think many people will come across The Delinquents without looking for it, knowing that this was only notable for being Robert Altman's first feature, along with Tom Laughlin's. It wasn't a miserable experience either - and it doesn't fall into that collection of films known as "Teenage Exploitation" that are nearly all terrible, some bad enough to be good. It's rises above itself and becomes uniquely average. Robert Altman wouldn't be back to features for another decade - and woudn't become a great for quite some time yet.

2.5

Wooley

10-08-22, 02:54 PM

[CENTER]https://i.postimg.cc/cLPm1NxF/the-player.jpg

The Player - 1992

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Michael Tolkin (based on his novel)

Starring Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward
Whoopi Goldberg & Peter Gallagher

I haven't seen nearly enough Robert Altman films - but what I have seen I have a deep appreciation for, especially McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us and Brewster McCloud. I'll add The Player to that list, for there are many different ways to enjoy watching this again - from admiring it from a technical and filmmaking standpoint, noticing new little details and cameos in the background and just watching to enjoy the story. Altman hasn't created something here that's mean-spirited or depressing, instead he lets us be seduced by what is ever so seductive about Hollywood - giving us glimpses inside and showing us why we should all admit to ourselves that the machine cranking out soulless films for mass consumption are part of an obsessive quest to give "the audience" exactly what they want. At one stage Larry Levy ponders leaving the screenwriter out of the process altogether. It's a democratic process, and we vote with our money. If we want Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis with a happy ending then why even bother making an artistic statement? It makes so much sense that a producer kills a writer in this film, before getting his happy ending - something even studio executives watching the film must have got.

4

* A producer watching dailies thought that Altman and co had made Bicycle Thieves as a 'film within a film' - having never heard of it.

The Player has been a personal favorite of mine since its release. Me and a few friends were really into it and used to watch it all the time. A really smart film, IMO.

PHOENIX74

10-09-22, 03:26 AM

NIGHTMARE IN CHICAGO - (1964)

I don't want to waste much time with this, but this 1964 television movie is something we have from Robert Altman that's half way between the television work he started doing with Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1957, and his arrival on the big screen with Countdown in 1967 and the much more critically praised That Cold Day in the Park in 1969, which really put a stamp and signpost on his career as a major motion picture director.

https://i.postimg.cc/7htWyqvc/Nightmare-in-Chicago.jpg

JOHN WILLIAMS
This movie is significant in a number of ways, one of which is who it uses as the composer of it's music - "Johnny Williams" is in fact the John Williams we've come to know and love. He was working on the Kraft Suspense Theatre show, from which this movie has been expanded from. Altman produced and directed this, which comes from the episode "Once Upon a Savage Night". It's about a serial killer on the run one night in Chicago, with the police in hot pursuit. On the same night, a convoy carrying a missile is causing a headache for the city, and the two events become entwined.

INSIDE THE MIND OF A KILLER
I really enjoyed the first 25 minutes, and thought it might have really been worth the effort to watch, but once we leave the bright confines of strip joints and offices and get onto the highway, the darkness and lack of clarity combine to make everything too confusing to make out. Altman really gives us a point of view from the killer's perspective, with his aversion to bright light, and insanity, portrayed in a variety of interesting ways. Echoes, voices, dizzying spinning, bright lights and other camera tricks lead us down the rabbit hole. Charles McGraw, Ted Knight and Philip Abbott lead the cast.

THE BIRTH OF THE TV-MOVIE
This movie also has the distinction of being one of the very first made-for-television movies that would go on to blight the landscape of moviedom - to the point where virtually nobody really looks upon them as "real" films. They're basically the audio-visual version of pulp, and cycle through a variety of constantly repeated storylines. This one feels different, but obviously lacks a film-level budget, and was further degraded by only being available as something recorded on video and uploaded to YouTube.

Based on the novel "Death on the Turnpike" by William P. McGivern, Nightmare in Chicago is a pit-stop on Altman's way to being the full package as far as filmmaking goes, and something I found really interesting and, for the most part, fun to watch in an analytical and nostalgic kind of way. It's obvious that the re-edit from episode-size to movie-size has just included a lot of pointless padding (people just standing around chatting, or doing nothing) but that's the kind of thing I was looking for, trying to puzzle how and why this was expanded into a movie. I doubt Altman himself, if he were still around, would like the fact that people can watch it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh0Ovo6qznM&t=1513s

PHOENIX74

10-12-22, 03:16 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/J0DC1xwX/countdown.webp

Countdown - 1967

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Loring Mandel
Based on a novel by Hank Searls

Starring James Caan, Robert Duvall & Joanna Moore

This review contains spoilers

1967 film Countdown is an interesting, almost forgotten film which marked another signpost on Robert Altman's way to 1970 and M*A*S*H - it was Altman's first proper feature since The Delinquents in 1957, but this was much more weighty - A William Conrad Production at Warner Brothers which saw him progress from his work on television to a proper budgeted studio film. It aimed at cashing in on the fervent interest in space exploration at the time, with the United States aiming to land people on the moon before the end of the decade. The experience must have shaken the young director, for before the film had made it's way through post-production Altman was fired and barred from entering the studio. The film was edited by somebody else, and was critically panned on release - soon being forgotten by most.

The film is based on the 1964 novel "The Pilgrim Project" by Hank Searls. A few years before the Apollo program has progressed far enough to land a man on the moon, the world is shocked to discover the Soviets have nearly got there - they've managed to get a manned flight into orbit around Earth's celestial neighbour. Obviously, if the United States doesn't act immediately their rival will beat them, but there exists a contingency plan for just this situation. Operation Pilgrim involves launching a one-manned Gemini spacecraft on a one-way journey - there, the landing astronaut will have to find a pre-launched and landed shelter to keep him alive for up to a year - when an Apollo craft will come and retrieve him. Charles "Chiz" Stewart (Robert Duvall) has trained for this, but the American government insist on sending a civilian instead of a military man, and as such Lee Stegler (James Caan) - a man who lacks Stewart's unflappable manner - must quickly train and familiarize himself with the mission. Stegler's wife Mickey (Joanna Moore) worries, as the mission encounters difficulties and Stegler must make life of death decisions on his perilous journey.

This production was given a huge boost when NASA agreed to cooperate and let Altman's crew film on location at places including their facilities at Cocoa Beach, Florida. It gives the film tremendous credibility, because everything we see looks perfectly real - and this feeling of authenticity continues throughout. The opening credits, which pan across launching facilities where a Saturn V rocket is poised for takeoff look gorgeous, and would be great to see on the big screen. That reality crosses over into parts of the screenplay as well, which is detailed and contains a lot of real and probable training methods and technical jargon. It was based on Searls' novel, and adapted by screenwriter Loring Mandel, who (interestingly) along with Altman, mainly worked in television at the time this was made. Mandel became an Emmy winner in 1968, for his writing on CBS Playhouse, and would go on to win another in 2001 for the television movie Conspiracy - something that is recommended viewing.

The film's score is from 2-time Oscar winner Leonard Rosenman (Barry Lyndon and Bound for Glory - nominated for Cross Creek and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home) - his Oscar winning days were still a decade away, and the music in Countdown is so typical of what you'd get in a sci-fi thriller that you could possibly use it for a parody (Airplane! for example) - it's hackneyed, trite and does absolutely nothing for me. I would very much prefer some kind of musical accompaniment that isn't bombarding me with - DRAMA! - SUSPENSE! - SHOCK! I've never liked scores that overdo this kind of thing, and although this kind of accentuated noise fits in well with the credits and a moment or two, it's very much overused. The cinematography was handled by William W. Spencer, again a television specialist like Mangel and Altman at the time. The film looks really nice at times, even with it's lack of effects. Spencer had won a Best Cinematography Emmy for the TV series 12 O'Clock High and would go on to win one for an episode of Fame. It's something to ponder - the reason why so many television specialists were brought on board for a film like this.

Robert Altman was a man for experimenting, pushing boundaries and making films that were different - so he was always apt to find himself in trouble with studios, and this is what happened here. When characters argue in this film, their dialogue often overlaps, just like it does in real life. Altman did this very much on purpose, and the results work just fine - at least, the results we get to see do. Unfortunately, Jack Warner happened to look in one day and see one of the scenes which had overlapping dialogue - and he took it for incompetence rather than experimentation. Altman wasn't only taken away from his own film as far as editing goes - he was locked out of the studio altogether, and had to pick up a box of his personal effects at the gate. The editing was done by Gene Milford (who had won Oscars for his editing on Lost Horizon and On the Waterfront) with no input from Altman. I don't know how much this altered the film in the end - it is a little lifeless, despite it's feeling of authenticity. I do know that a lot can change depending on how films are cut, and so we never really got to see Altman's ultimate vision here, despite this being his film.

Another result of the studio's interference here is a very familiar story. Countdown is a film that has a heavy sense of doom hanging in the air - the rushed mission and the wrong choice of astronaut all combine to make this seem like a cautionary tale. Stegler is a frustrating character, and during his mission he's always on the verge of panic - which at times can get tiring and exasperating. He seems destined to mess this mission up, and when close to landing he tells mission control that he sees the habitat marker when really he can't. He should abort. So when we get to his ultimate fate, there are three ways the film could go. Either he finds the shelter and is saved, he runs out of oxygen and dies, or else the ending is left ambiguous. The ultimate plan, according to Altman himself, was to leave his fate as an ambiguous uncertainty - he probably didn't make it - but we don't find out. "I left it ambiguous--the guy was probably going to die on the moon...He goes off in one direction, and the camera pans back and reveals the beacon is in the opposite direction. That was how I ended it." The studio, of course, couldn't resist shooting and inserting a happy ending. It ruins the film's end, because it feels incongruous to everything we've seen to that point.

Overall, Countdown is a difficult film to judge - but I appreciate the dedication everyone had to make this as realistic as possible. We also get some sense of the personal drama, with the astronaut's wives (Barbara Baxley plays Jean, Stewart's wife) giving us the familiar stress that they were always under - their husband's lives on the line. Also adding something to the much-needed drama is the personal conflict between Duvall and Caan, one chosen over the other for being the first man on the moon, despite one of them being more trained and ready than the other. It simmers at the edges, and breaks out here and there over other things by proxy. Arguments between bureaucrats, who make up most of the rest of the characters in the film, might not be some people's idea of an action-packed film however. When we do get to the action - it's a little anticlimactic. There's a lack of effects showing what's really happening, and what the audience gets are descriptions of what's happening from Caan strapped to his spacecraft seat and Duvall in mission control. The film is a mix of stress, anxiety and anger - seemingly headed towards disaster in a rushed attempt to beat the Russians to a lunar landing.

Not many people like Countdown - it was critically panned on release, and the same holds for today. Only once did I read a positive review, and that came from Leonard Maltin's book of reviews where it gets 3½ out of 4, praising the "excellent ensemble performances" and calling it an "early gem from Altman". I feel good about that, because I find myself really rooting for this film's success - but judging for myself, I can't help but feel this is a very average film on balance. There are some things I really like about it - it's realism, location cinematography, cautionary story - and things I really dislike - it's lack of special effects, it's score, it's lack of really strong drama and eventfulness. I'd suggest watching it to other people interested in this era of space travel, and NASA's history. It's interesting enough in that respect to be recommended viewing. Everyone else could very much get by without watching it. It's a little dry and technical, and stays true to reality in places where a little artistic license could have helped the film's pace and drama. I love that authentic stuff, but I feel most people will be turned off by it.

We have to be very thankful that Countdown didn't permanently kill Altman's feature film career. He did go back to television for a short time, but was soon after making another film, and after that came his breakout hit M*A*S*H. In any case - this was more a case of Altman being a director for hire, directing somebody else's movie instead of his own. Despite it not being a great film, it did show enough promise to prove that he had great skill as a director - an experimental filmmaker who wasn't afraid of making risky choices. This movie is only a nudge away from being really good - if only we had that ambiguous ending that fit the rest of the film, with a few special effects inserts and a better edit from the director. He might have even wanted a few reshoots, because we're close with the one we got. That's not the film I watched however, and as such it falls just short of really being something. I love watching Duvall and Caan this early in their careers, and it's fascinating following Altman on his unusual and long apprenticeship. Here's another movie Warner Brothers sabotaged - shooting themselves in the foot for the umpteenth time and wrecking a film that could have been great. This film still might not have found an audience, at least right away, but as it is, it falls just short of the moon.

2.5

Daniel M

10-12-22, 03:42 AM

I love Robert Altman and I specially love The Player and Nashville so its great to read you write so affectionately about them.

The Player is definitely a very smart film and one I need to revisit. It stayed with me a long time after I first watched it and it's partly inspired me to knock up my own film screenplay set in the dark, murderous word of Hollywood. Hopefully one day it will see the light of day ;)

The way you describe Nashville is spot on too in terms of how it attempts to encapsulate (and question?) American culture. A really beautiful, mystery, engrossing film.

This thread is a reminder that I still have many of his film's to get round too. I've seen most of his major works and nice to see Brewster McCloud get a mention, not surprising with Harold and Maude on your favourites list.

crumbsroom

10-12-22, 03:42 AM

Great thread.

PHOENIX74

10-15-22, 02:04 AM

Worth including here, for it's whimsical and flippant nature that helps to illustrate the way Altman was changing as a filmmaker is Pot au feu, a play on words and a short film about smoking weed, which preceded the filmmaker's first really good film.

Pot au feu - (1967)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohw3eaaC73o

PHOENIX74

10-15-22, 02:20 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/Qx7F8nHk/Poster-of-the-movie-That-Cold-Day-in-the-Park.jpg

That Cold Day in the Park - 1969

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Gillian Freeman
Based on a novel by Richard Miles

Starring Sandy Dennis & Michael Burns

I find that I wrap myself in knots trying to explain why I like That Cold Day in the Park a great deal, so the solution to that might be simplicity. The factual before the analytical - and then it might become apparent. This film could be considered Robert Altman's first real feature debut, but the funny thing about Altman is that this can be said for 5 of his films. The James Dean Story was literally the first, but it was co-directed and a documentary. The Delinquents was his first solo effort, but that was a low-budget project for hire. Countdown was his first big studio effort - but it wasn't really his film, and he was removed from it before it was even edited. This film actually feels like a Robert Altman movie - one you'd come to expect from him, so it probably deserves the title of "first" more than the others. (I add M*A*S*H to the group of 'firsts' because it was his big breakout hit - the film that finally announced his arrival as a filmmaker of note.) This is a forgotten little gem - one that was absolutely trashed by the critics when it was released, and even though I've read some of the reviews I still don't understand why.

This is essentially a play-like film (the way it's shot, and the way the sets are designed, reminds me a lot of the BBC's Play For Today - and episodes like Brimstone and Treacle which was filmed in 1976, but not aired until 1987 due to certain unsavoury aspects to it) - the plot concerns itself with two main characters. Sandy Dennis plays Frances Austen, a 32-year-old spinster who strangely regards the elderly as her peers, hosting dinner parties and joining them in games of lawn bowls. Frances is a virgin, introverted, naïve, uptight and old fashioned. She has a streak of innocence about her, and her general psychiatric condition means she's completely out of touch with her sexuality. Michael Burns plays "The Boy" - someone Frances spies on a park bench one day, and feels empathy and a little longing for. When it rains, she invites him in to dry his clothes and have a bath - the sexual tension in the air is almost immediate, but she never acts on it, and the boy stays mute through the entire encounter. From this moment on, Frances assumes that he is mute - but he's not really. Invited to stay the night, he's locked in one of her bedrooms, but eventually escapes through the window to go visit his family - paying especial attention to his sister.

Frances treats The Boy like an animal she's caught, a pet to be played with - and his continued presence awakens something sexual inside of her. The boy however, is too well acquainted with sex for it to be anything other than a simple pleasure to him. The difference between them, and the hidden dangers - unpredictable and possibly disastrous - is what the film explores. The sexual revolution was at it's peak in 1969, but not every single person on the planet had been sexually liberated. For Frances, inhibitions and a lack of progression has turned the act into something psychologically dangerous - and it seems that surrounding herself with the elderly has kept this at bay for a long time. She rebuffs one man from her group, who is unattractive and old enough to be her father, but she hints at a sexual awakening by nervously seeing her Gynaecologist, in what feels like one more step in a drawn out ceremony that differs greatly from the more liberated. The Boy, meanwhile, is at one stage propositioned by his own sister, although we never learn whether this incestuous invitation is taken up. The very hint of it completes more of the picture - he treats sex as a very ordinary thing, and for Frances it has almost religious importance. Her expectations are building. In the shadows, cataclysm lurks.

Altman had the good fortune to be able to work with a noted cinematographer behind the camera - László Kovács, who had just been director of photography on Easy Rider, and would go on to work on great films such as Five Easy Pieces (an aside - Jack Nicholson wanted, but failed to get the part of the boy in this - he was considered too old), Paper Moon (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2334512#post2334512), Ghostbusters and Shampoo. For the first time in his own films, the cinematography has a feeling about it that's very Robert Altman-like with a lot of interesting slow Altmanesque zooms and experimentation. We look through windows, as if trying to capture Frances unawares, and often the camera finds itself looking through something. The camera peeks and crawls and there's a wonderful sense of unbounded voyeuristic liberation, and no set rules or static convention. Sometimes we see by way of reflection, and sometimes our view is obscured. It's very different from what we got in Altman's Countdown and seems to signify the first time he had experienced enough freedom to influence the visual style of a story - making as much drama from the camera, as if the camera was one of the performers in the film. I found this aspect of the film extremely enjoyable.

The score is very light and easy on the ears - a lot of the instrumentation you hear coming from only a few sources. A piano here, strings there - slow and very easy. The absolute opposite of the overpowering crescendos you hear in films like Countdown, and one that obviously fits this film very neatly and is very interestingly inventive and fun to listen to. One moment you're listening to a flute, and the next guitar strings are being lightly strummed as a piano might quietly sneak in and take over. I loved the crazy way it leaned when we get to the film's more crazy moments. Responsible for all this is Oscar winner Johnny Mandel (Best Original Song, "The Shadow of Your Smile", which is heard in the 1966 film The Sandpiper. He was also nominated for the song "A Time for Love" in An American Dream the year after.) All of these elements contributed by talented artists fit very neatly together and add up to a much more enjoyable cinematic experience for those who enjoy Robert Altman films - you look through a window, or past something obscuring your attempted voyeurism while an uneasy keyboard disturbs your usual sense of ease - only to be suddenly confronted with silence and your thoughts.

Editing the film was Danford B. Greene, who would find himself nominated for an Oscar the year after this for his work on Altman's M*A*S*H - this as well is more accomplished than it was in Countdown. Art director Leon Ericksen would go on to work on other Altman films and eventually Star Wars. Overall a great crew, and they put together a fine film I enjoyed - I talked to a friend who's an Altman fan to tell him how much I enjoyed That Cold Day in the Park and he was very glad to hear that I felt the same way he did. So why was this film shouted down and given such poor treatment from the critics? Ebert called it a "torturous essay on abnormal psychology" and said Altman should have made this a horror movie. Maltin (who praised Countdown) called it "bizarre and unmoving". Perhaps it was too unusual for people in 1969, who really wouldn't have known what to expect from Robert Altman. Perhaps some critics were made too uncomfortable, thinking that they weren't meant to be feeling that way. Perhaps the film's pace was too slow for what were the norms at the time.

There's the possibility that this film is just something that happened to fall into a specific zone of mine, with all the elements combining to make this a film that suits my own tastes. I'd just seen Sandy Dennis in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? An Oscar winning performance in that really geared me to look at her in an admiring fashion - but I still think her performance in this holds up just as well, and that she should have gained more recognition from it than she did. Michael Burns is more of an unknown element for me (in a role Jack Nicholson would have been manifestly wrong for) and I can't say that I've seen him in much. He'd leave the profession altogether and become a scholar in later years. This film is mostly about Frances, so Burns doesn't need to really shine, and he performs his role adequately, without covering himself in glory. When I watch the film most of my attention is stolen by Dennis, and my feeling for her character is one of sadness and empathy. Of course, sadness and empathy only go so far, but to say more would be to ruin the surprises the film has in store.

Altman would follow That Cold Day in the Park with a series of films that have become classics - some of the greatest films of all time. I knew that this would be far better than the films he served his 'apprenticeship' on, but I wasn't expecting something this good - a film worthy in my eyes of being included in that group of films. Although this is generally well regarded, I think I'm still fighting against the grain in praising it as much as I am, but the movie strikes me as something of a buried classic and a future favourite. I never would have come near it if I hadn't have been exploring the early career of this filmmaker, for I'd never heard of it before - probably thanks to the critical reception it got when released. I again have to wonder at how demoralized Robert Altman was by this stage of his career. His career read like a series of disasters with no respite, and when he finally made a really good film the critics dismissed it and it sunk without a trace. I'm surprised he still had enough enthusiasm to make M*A*S*H. This went on to be considered the first of three films Altman would make about female psychosis - the next two being 3 Women and Images.

I had a great deal of fun looking at and watching this film, full of surprises and an excellent end to the prologue of a great artist's catalogue of cinematic works - I hope it's a film that undergoes a critical reevaluation as time goes on, and gains a new audience in the future. The great thing about the modern age is the avenues a film has for rediscovery. But if it just happens to be a connection limited to a few enthusiasts, I have a feeling my thoughts won't diminish over time and I'll never be persuaded otherwise. Sandy Dennis and That Cold Day in the Park completely won me over. For Robert Altman freaks - there's a scene mid-way that takes place at the birth control clinic that marks one of the most familiar styles identifiable to him, with many voices talking over each other in general (but pointed and meaningful) chit-chat. It's the first moment it appeared in his films, but I can't say if it had ever appeared on television. In general, it has his high standard of cinematic artistry and I consider it among his best films - a home run at his 4th, 3rd, 2nd or 1st time at bat, whichever way you look at it.

4.5

PHOENIX74

11-06-22, 07:29 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/fTWLNpLs/mash.jpg

MASH - 1970

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Ring Lardner Jr.
Based on a novel by Richard Hooker

Starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt
Sally Kellerman & Robert Duvall

Like many people, I grew up getting to know M*A*S*H as a television show that regularly haunted weekday evenings with a never ending series of reruns, specials and spin-offs. Nobody ever stopped to inform me that it had originally started life as a novel, which was adapted to the big screen, marking Robert Altman's breakthrough in feature films - lastly transmogrifying into the series I was so used to. Even the fact that my parents saw it on the big screen when they were courting was never assumed to be information worthy of passing on to me. It's a film that I had to slowly work my way into, because Alan Alda and company really clouded my ability to just take it on as a lone entity - I happened not to be a huge fan of that show, which unfortunately gave me preconceptions I took into the film. Robert Altman's attempt to make films that weren't mutated into soulless commercial product, and turn MASH into a scolding yet funny antiwar feature which highlighted the madness and crass obscenity of war, wasn't initially as clear as it should have been.

The film begins by introducing us to Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce Jr. (Donald Sutherland) as he arrives to take on duty at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. He immediately meets Capt. Augustus Bedford "Duke" Forrest (Tom Skerritt) and steals a jeep to take him to where they'll be operating on young war casualties. The two come across a taciturn, misanthropic fellow-surgeon Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) whose focus on being religiously pious seems to be hypocritical in view of some of his behaviour - so when Major Margaret Houlihan arrives as Head Nurse and the two become intimately acquainted both Hawkeye and Duke make sure they push Burns to the point where he breaks - and is carted away in a straight-jacket. In the meantime Capt. John Francis Xavier "Trapper John" McIntyre (Elliott Gould) arrives, and the three doctors play pranks and are involved in escapades that mostly go to show the lengths these surgeons take to alleviate the horrors of the situations they face in their operating tent. The film follows them and strides forth in an episodic nature, with the emphasis on humour and light-hearted rebellion against authority.

By the time he was offered the chance to direct MASH, Robert Altman had been in the business for a considerable amount of time, had spent 10 years doing television work and had directed 4 features - he was the ultimate experienced novice, and was well aware of what studios could do after his experiences directing Countdown (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2339406#post2339406). Many more experienced directors had already been offered the screenplay, and rejected it - but the spirit of anarchy it represented must have made the film very attractive to such a maverick. Producer Ingo Preminger met with the renegade director, and Altman, for his part, showed him the short film he'd made some time earlier in '67 - Pot au feu (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2340185#post2340185) which amused and encouraged Preminger enough to give the job to him. From that moment on, Altman carefully set out to attract as little attention as he could so that he could have the freedom to do the film his way (bringing the film in under-budget and on time) - in a manner that was fairly revolutionary in those days. Ad-libbing from the cast was encouraged, and actors could speak over each other's lines with creative freedom - the camera itself having a likewise freedom to catch incidental moments. Stars Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland thought Altman was mad, and at many stages tried to get him fired - fearing the resulting film would ruin their reputation.

The emergent film plays a little rough today, for although much of the misogyny and racism had been scaled back from the novel, it still chafes a little to watch what these doctors do. Altman defends this by saying he intentionally had his characters do these bad things so what they did could be compared to the carnage going on during a war - explicitly demonstrating just how obscene and awful war really is. Worse than any kind of sexism, racism or crude behaviour you can imagine. The film's only black character is called "spearchucker" and the women in the film are treated purely as sexual objects, their work as nurses receding into the background. In a situation like that, it's more difficult to lighten my mood to the point where I'd laugh at their antics - but at the same time I still appreciate the illumination all of this does. The naturalism of the actors also helps the film a great deal, and instantly date any other film (war film or otherwise) from the year MASH was released - while MASH itself doesn't seem dated at all. Like Apocalypse Now (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2273773#post2273773) would at the end of the decade, this film was a direct illustration of the insanity of war - something Altman came to realise more and more as the production continued.

Screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. initially felt burned by Altman's process and what that had done to his screenplay. Most of the dialogue from it had been completely transformed - to the point where he complained that "not one word" he'd written had managed to make it to the screen. Compounding this was the irony of him winning an Oscar for his screenplay for MASH. Over the years people (including a conciliatory Lardner Jr. himself) have argued that the basic structure and story remained very much intact, and that some dialogue had indeed made it into the finished product. At first glance it might seem like an undeserved Oscar win, but on closer examination it seems less so. The film also managed to garner an Oscar nomination for Robert Altman himself - a dizzying achievement when you consider just how abused and mistreated he'd been by studios and critics for his work (his previous film, That Cold Day in the Park (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2340190#post2340190) deserved far more recognition.) The film's box office success, coupled with those nominations assured that MASH would be nominated for Best Picture at the 1971 Academy Awards - but it ended up losing to another war film 20th Century Fox had made, Patton, and Altman likewise lost to Franklin J. Schaffner who directed that film.

Altman dragged cinematographer Harold E. Stine along with him to be cinematographer on this film - he knew him from his days directing television, and The D.P. was up to speed with Altman's fast-paced style. Stine would need to keep up with that pace and almost had to be as improvisational as the actors were. Those praising the inventiveness of many of the shots wouldn't have been fully aware just how improvised many of them were. Visually, the muddy brown and verdant greens dominate the film to the extent that when Hawkeye and Trapper John put on golfing clothes the burst of colour is shocking and incongruent to the entire film. Of course, the surgical scenes have their fair share of many different toned reds - and were lucky to escape the cutting room floor. Stine would soon be nominated for an Oscar for his work on The Poseidon Adventure, but missed out here. It's a good-looking film, and I'd say the cinematography is a definite success. More egg on the face of 20th Century Fox who at first demanded that Harold E. Stine not be used on the film - but Altman was adamant, because he knew Stine was a director of photography who would do what he wanted.

Scoring the film was Johnny Mandel, who had worked on Altman's previous film That Cold Day in the Park (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2340190#post2340190). It's Mandel who composed the tune of the now famous "Suicide is Painless", with Altman's son Mike Altman who was only a teenager at the time (around 13 or 14) - the director only wanted some cheap, improvised lyrics and everywhere he turned he got greater lyrics than he really wanted for this seemingly invented song. The most interesting result from this is that Robert Altman's young son ended up earning millions of dollars from the royalties from that song while the director himself only ever earned $75 grand for directing the film. Mandel also found various Japanese songs to use during radio and loudspeaker moments (usually better than the "bad ones" Altman was really looking for.) These musical interludes, including sung songs and various other tunes make up the eclectic sound of the film - giving a kind of army-regulated radio feel to everything that happens. Mandel had been an Oscar winner for the song "The Shadow of Your Smile" in 1966 but overlooked for a nomination when it came to "Suicide is Painless" - which is strange considering just how big the song became.

Forbidden Planet (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2341234#post2341234)'s art director, Arthur Lonergan, was officially an art director for MASH, but Robert Altman recalls that Leon Eriksen was the man responsible for the art direction in this film. Eriksen was non-union, and so in the credits he's an "associate producer" - thus escaping any of the official ramifications he would have had being officially credited for the job he did. If you check out his credits on the IMDb, you'll see he's always an art director or production designer except for this one "associate producer" credit. It's another crew member Altman carried over from That Cold Day in the Park (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2340190#post2340190) and an innovator over how dirty he made the costumes and set decoration look - not to mention the ways he coloured and created blood for the operating scenes. This immediately made MASH look better and much more realistic than other 20th Century Fox war films being produced at the same time like Patton (which, ironically won the Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration - go figure) and Tora! Tora! Tora! Perhaps the Academy had the last laugh there, for Eriksen couldn't be nominated at all due to his union predicament. He did a great job on MASH though.

Sally Kellerman is great in the film, and although it's very much an ensemble movie she was the lone Oscar nominee acting-wise, beaten by the elderly Helen Hayes for her comedic moments as the old biddy Ada in Airport for Best Supporting Actress, but neither should have won. The award should have gone to Karen Black for her amazing performance in Five Easy Pieces. Editor Danford B. Greene did a marvelous job as well, and received a deserved Oscar nomination. He was beaten by Hugh S. Fowler and his fancied work on the favoured film at Oscar time, Patton. In any case, you have to take into account the fact that Altman was along for the ride in the editing suite, and had significant say over the direction it took - not that 20th Century Fox would have been very pleased about that. The studio kept on insisting on changes that would have dampened the film's impact and made it just your average run-of-the-mill comedy. They wanted the bloody operating theatre scenes gone, bad language out, and various other cuts and adjustments. The pace of the film and cuts from the action just as something funny has occurred are part of it's grace - and editing should not be subject to the demands of non-artists or non-professionals.

That Cold Day in the Park (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2340190#post2340190) was a great film - but MASH was the first film that Robert Altman practiced and experimented with, creating a new style - one that would come to be associated with his films. If you watch the movie closely, you'll notice that there is as much going on in the background as there is in the foreground - and that if you alter your perspective you notice actions that you completely missed the first few times you watch the film. Altman also created an 8-track system for audio, then a 16 track system, because he wanted to record more than the principals. The feel the film gets is something approaching real life - where people rarely stand still and stay quiet while other people command an imaginary audience. Altman had been locked out of the studio in the past for even daring to attempt a scene where two people talk over each other, but in MASH he doggedly tried this again, and it became something of a signature. Not only did it come off, but he had the last laugh when MASH became the third-highest grossing film of the year and a critical success on top of that. The film won the prestigious Palme d'Or at Cannes, won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical - with Robert Altman himself winning a Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award. He'd arrived, and would finally have enough clout to make films he wanted, the way he wanted.

I really like and admire this film, and find parts of it really funny - though perhaps not as funny as other people find it. I like it more for it's style, thematic meaning and merit than the comedy. I do appreciate the "hot lips" moment, and the way the characters find a way to survive - fair enough that their way is through disobedience, pranks, jokes and crass rejection of anything that denotes an "army" way of doing things. You can sense that they're acting this way in response to the senseless horrors they're subjected to. Obviously they're surgeons, and would see injury every day - but for people to be ordered to be doing this to each other, only for them to try and put things right by operating on them - this must really grind away at a person's sense of the military machine they're a part of. So they find outlets in casual sex and poking fun at everything you or I might find sacred. I don't laugh along all that much, but that doesn't mean I'm not on their side, or don't understand why they're doing what they're doing. When they're part of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, their work must feel like trying to fix horrible damage that their own leaders are senselessly creating for them. If they weren't the way they are - then they'd lose their minds. This is perhaps why the simpler pure comedy of the television series irked Altman, especially when it became much more famous than his film.

I love MASH most for what it did - the way it elevated so many actors who didn't have a career yet - with Altman surreptitiously hiring them, because studios would never take such a chance. One of these young people is Bud Cort - who would go on to be the lead in Altman's next film, Brewster McCloud, and find fame in Harold and Maude. I love the way it opted for realism over "more of the same" from major studios, and it's sheer irreverence. I love the way it kick-started the careers of Donald Sutherland (struggling to build a career on his great role in Kelly's Heroes), Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt and Sally Kellerman. I love this film for setting Robert Altman free and allowing him to make films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, The Long Goodbye and Nashville (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2338109#post2338109) over the ensuing decade, along with other noteworthy and immensely enjoyable gems. It was 1970 and Altman had a period of sustained excellence ahead of him - outrageously great creations that only grow in stature over time. That all started with MASH (it really started with That Cold Day in the Park (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=2340190#post2340190)) and recognition that this "crazy" and rebellious filmmaker had served his nearly two decade apprenticeship and was ready to create works of art - his first a cream pie in the face of authority and rules-based order.

4

PHOENIX74

11-18-22, 06:08 AM

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Tom Laughlin mixes with Peter Miller, Richard Bakalyan and co in The Delinquents (1957)

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James Caan is ready to go to the moon, in Countdown (1967)

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Something wicked lurks in the heart of Sandy Dennis, in That Cold Day in the Park (1969)

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Fun and games fit the playful idea of life in The Boy (Michael Burns) in That Cold Day in the Park (1969)

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Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt and Donald Sutherland confer in MASH (1970)

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Robert Altman surveys the scene during the filming of MASH (1970)

PHOENIX74

11-18-22, 06:08 AM

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Brewster Mccloud - 1970

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Doran William Cannon

Starring Bud Cort, Sally Kellerman, Shelley Duvall
Michael Murphy & René Auberjonois

Robert Altman followed up his smash-hit MASH with a film of incredible invention, imagination and eccentric panache. That it was a film with no real popular mainstream credentials goes to credit his bravery, and his one-minded determination to make films that were artistically satisfying to himself - over and above their ability to make money. Brewster McCloud is a film that's both easy and very hard to explain, because it messes so playfully with feature film conventions that it almost splinters and breaks apart as you're watching it. MGM's Leo the Lion doesn't roar - and instead we hear Rene Auberjonois (who played Father John Mulcahy in MASH) state "I forgot the opening line," and the film continues on this shambolic course when Margaret Hamilton (who once played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2241200#post2241200)) interrupts herself singing the American national anthem to criticize the band backing her - sending us back to watch the start of the opening credits again. It's that kind of film - one which eventually find's a focus on birds - and specifically on one boy who is building a contraption that will enable him to fly like them.

Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) lives in a room inside the bowels of the Houston Astrodome, a domed sports stadium built in 1965, nominally for the Houston Astros baseball team and the Houston Oilers NFL side. As we see him plan and construct his flying machine, we are also treated to a lecture by an unnamed man (played by Rene Auberjonois) about birds, and man's relation to them - with his words often conveying a certain meaning for a scene that we're watching. McCloud is assisted and protected by Louise (Sally Kellerman) who appears to have scars where she once had wings - appearing angelic, and behaving in a chaste manner, despite her occasional nudity. Whenever the two come up against a problematic person, that person usually ends up dead - strangled and covered in bird droppings. The string of dead bodies they have left behind ignites a furious investigation by the authorities, who have "Shaft" (Michael Murphy) - a "San Francisco super cop" - brought in to investigate. McCloud's only other pressing problem is the lure of earthly pleasures in the form of the seductive Suzanne (Shelley Duvall) - who is more tempting than his otherwise helpful girl Hope (Jennifer Salt).

Much of the early part of the film is devoted to seeing some disagreeable characters earn their comeuppance in satisfyingly interesting ways - and these scenes are often more devoted to our intellectual enjoyment than narrative coherence or sense. Margaret Hamilton, who harangues her all-negro band to the point where they burst into a beautiful rendition of "Lift Every Voice and Sing (Black National Hymn)" in protest, ends up cursing the black birds around her aviary as 'n-word' birds and getting crushed when it collapses on her. She's wearing red ruby slippers of course, and we hear a moment of "Over the Rainbow" in the score. Stacy Keach plays an ancient, greedy landlord - Abraham Wright - in such an over-the-top manner that he becomes a whimsical novelty at once - one who ends up flying down a freeway in his wheelchair to his doom when his limo driver - Brewster - loses patience with him. Interesting editing choices, unusual pace and strangeness - it's incredible that any of it fits together, but the parts compliment each other, and so it makes perfect sense when we fly in into the clouds, free from any expectation that we would be before it happens. The film lives in the 'now' to such an extent it becomes almost impossible to describe it's structure - and if it has one, it's one that changes and evolves as the film goes on anyway.

Altman stuck to his MASH formula in one regard - he took Doran William Cannon's screenplay and threw it in the trash - instead guiding his actors through the film, and giving them the freedom to create their own dialogue as they saw fit. He didn't believe that filming exactly what was on paper would make for a very good film. He also started on his journey of collecting a troupe of players who would generally journey with him from film to film, with some either being added or dropping out. In Brewster McCloud we have 7 actors who had major roles in MASH - Bud Cort as Brewster (who was Pvt. Boone), Sally Kellerman as Louise (Maj. Margaret 'Hot Lips' O'Houlihan), Michael Murphy as Shaft ('Me Lay' Marston, and also as 'The Rounder' in That Cold Day in the Park), Rene Auberjonois as The Lecturer (Father John Mulcahy), John Schuck as Johnson (Capt. 'Painless' Waldowski), Corey Fischer as Hines (Capt. Bandini) and G. Wood as Crandall (Brig. Gen. Hammond). He used the power being the director of such a hit gave him, and used it to make a film he wanted to make with less interference that would usually come his way while shooting and putting his film together. As such, this feels like the first truly Altman-esque film ever released.

The film had two cinematographers - Altman apparently replaced director of photography Jordan Cronenweth (responsible for such films as Blade Runner, a significant film for him, and Cutter's Way later in his career) with the slightly more experienced Lamar Boren, who had done technical work on the Sean Connery James Bond films previously. I find that the cinematography isn't as revolutionary as the editing by Lou Lombardo - a change for Altman who had Danford B. Greene help edit his previous two films. Lombardo would go on to became an Altman regular - and here he's always cutting to and from moments you'd never expect him to. Even the sound seems to be working at odds with it, and very deliberately. The last thing Altman wants is for us to be comfortable with this film, and it makes for a piece of cinema that always has discoveries in store for me every time I watch it. This disorientation that Altman helps to foster is the subject of many an analysis and review of Brewster McCloud - Billy Stevenson goes into it in depth (https://cinematelevisionmusic.com/2019/05/04/altman-brewster-mccloud-1970/) in Cinematelevisionmusic, and this film marks the beginning of a high-concept artistic partnership between the likes of Altman and Lombardo, along with other post-production collaborators.

Music-wise, Brewster McCloud relies on a soundtrack with stirring and differentiated songs which grow organically from what we're watching and play in the background - driving the emotional resonance of the movie. Robert Altman teamed up with John Phillips (from the Mamas & the Papas) in this regard, and the songs work particularly well in anchoring the loose narrative at times when we need a little certainty from what we're seeing and where we are. These moments are most dramatic and effective with songs like 'I Promise Not To Tell' and 'Last of the Unnatural Acts' towards the film's latter stages. At the same time, offering a counterpoint when we're soaring in the clouds Phillips makes way for Merry Clayton to belt out 'White Feather Wings' which melds beautifully with the idea of flight, and fits the theme in the most perfect way I could imagine (not to mention making the Brewster McCloud soundtrack a necessity for many people who have seen the film.) Peggy Lipton drops in for a few moments to add to the orchestral vibe that's so in tune with the whole film, and as mentioned earlier, a fantastic rendition of 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' is performed.

Altman must also have been particularly pleased to have enough clout to rely on art direction from old Preston Ames (a two-time Oscar winner for Gigi and An American in Paris) and George W. Davis (Oscars for The Robe and The Diary of Anne Frank) although in keeping with how Altman was molding the film as a whole, there isn't a lot that's imposed on the film from outside influences. Everything is allowed to grow organically. If you're quick you'll spot little MASH references - but one item of interest that gnaws away at your brain is how much Brewster McCloud looks like Wally/Waldo in Martin Handford's "Where's Wally/Waldo?" books with his red and white striped polo top and big thick rimmed dark glasses. There are times you'd have to swear that this is where the idea germinated as you watch Brewster walk and run through crowds in his attention-grabbing garb - even though by all accounts the similarity is just one of those coincidences. Someone with glasses had to have worn red and white striped tops every so often (perhaps until those books came out, whereupon they'd constantly be pointed at by people telling them they'd found Waldo.) Also memorable for influencing the film's look is the new Houston Astrodome and surrounds, and Shaft's Bullitt garb - down to the blue contact lenses he wears.

Of course, being a comedy there's a lot of humour - but not so much in an attempt to get an audience laughing with joy. Altman's targets at times make for a dark kind of fun, and with racism, police corruption, earthly pleasures, suicide, murder and greed - it's a long way from a comedy you can enjoy with your kids with the whole family on board. There's the wry observations that characters make, and rampant dementia that seems to be affecting all of those unhappily at odds with the world. Shaft's "How tall was he?" dialogue with Abraham Wright's butler is laugh-out-loud funny though, and Rene Auberjonois seems to be aiming for the ridiculously comic with his out-of-control bird obsession - the rest is the undoubted fun you have when you have birds crap on those you hate. Bird droppings are to be expected of course - something that birds have always had over us. I mean, how often do birds get hit with our droppings? With this, Altman can immediately take a corrupt narcotics officer who threatens Brewster and bring him down in stature - both alive and as a murder victim. I'm struck by this film's cleverness, and agree with every detour we unexpectedly go on - but in real life I'd stop short of applauding any serial killer. In Brewster McCloud, the dark comedy is skewed enough that this is more Punch and Judy than Bone Collector.

Also targeted is the cinema Altman founded himself surrounded by in this era - Bullitt the most glaringly obvious, with not only the character of Shaft, but an epic car chase of his own, featuring 4 different cars and varied surprises and twists. Art director Leon Ericksen - with Altman through That Cold Day in the Park and MASH continued his collaboration with him by designing the iconic bird contraption Bud Cort flies in at the film's end. It seems a strangely mainstream idea to have the Astrodome as the film's setting and location - and even stranger was the idea to premiere the film at the Astrodome itself in front of tens of thousands of spectators (apparently this didn't come off so well, with sound problems contributing to the night being a big flop.) Once the film was ready for distribution, MGM had no idea how to market it - and I certainly understand how they must have felt. It's an odd bird. In the end they took all of the 'police investigation' scenes and melded them together, giving them inappropriate representation in the trailer. They then went along the lines of "You saw what Robert Altman did with the army in MASH - now see what he does with the police in Brewster McCloud!" The whole trailer plays like a different film, and is very deceptive and misleading.

So, how do I feel about Brewster McCloud? It's unlike any other film I've ever seen, and also works perfectly in what it's trying to do - and goes further to work in what were probably many unintended ways. I love it. I still discover new meaning, and many smaller things in it all the time, for it's working at so many levels all at once, with action, sound, music and emotion that does the same. Shelley Duvall shines in her cinematic (and indeed acting) debut, and Bud Cort shows that he has enough charisma to lead a feature film, even if he then went on to squander that potential in the years after he appeared in Harold and Maude. I think the film is just as funny as it was intended to be, and was one of the most daring cinematic experiments ever conceived. Altman had only just tasted success, and most people would be hell-bent on following that up with something much along the same lines. He didn't. He used what he had and went for broke in constructing Brewster McCloud - the behaviour of a real maverick who was true to his own sense of what he wanted to become after his many years working for others.

I first came to watch this film after going to the cinema to watch a documentary about Hal Ashby, and after commenting on the odd actor who played Harold in Harold and Maude a friend sat me down and had me watch Brewster McCloud with him. I was immediately delighted with it - a breath of fresh air in an industry that is loathe to experiment on scales like that. Some student might give his ideas a try with some help and a few thousand dollars - but major directors don't usually do it with major releases. There are familiar beats from MASH - in the place of the speakers making announcements as cutaways to break up scenes, Altman has Auberjonois do it with his lecture - but then goes one step further to make the lecturer's dialogue make a thematic and metaphorical statement on the scene his sound is overlapping with - Altman was still making progress on ideas and previous experiments. Brewster McCloud is a cult film now, and not many people are aware of it's existence. The one hope it has is it's place amongst the films of one of the most noted directors of the 21st Century - with many a film fan coming across it when tracing Altman's career. I hope it proves to be a wonderful surprise for those who watch it, just as it was for me.

5

PHOENIX74

03-03-23, 01:36 AM

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McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 1971

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Brian McKay & Robert Altman
Based on the novel "McCabe" by Edmund Naughton

Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, René Auberjonois
& William Devane

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is no ordinary film, and stands as the kind of masterpiece that only comes around once in a while. Robert Altman, who had already shown a certain consistency in the quality of films he made, topped them all to this point while staying true to his non-commercial artistic interests. I first came across the film when reading Danny Peary's "Alternate Oscars", where he'd awarded the 1971 statuette to a film that hadn't even been nominated for Best Picture - this one. In the years since, my appreciation for McCabe & Mrs. Miller has grown every time I've watched it, culminating in a kind of reverence that one has for the special works of art that do something profound to their souls - it's such a beautiful piece of filmmaking that it stands as a kind of testament to the craft itself. Altman himself called it a kind of "anti-Western", but only because it simply defies any attempt to classify it genre-wise. It's a western narrative, but every aspect of the classical western to that point was turned on it's head - and the result was a kind of true representation of it's time, full of honest, bitter-sweet pain.

John McCabe (Warren Beatty) shows up in the small settlement of Presbyterian Church with the impression of being a man of some standing. Rumours are he's a deadly gunfighter, and his worldly manner allows him to ingratiate himself with the locals, holding poker games and later bringing prostitutes for a whorehouse and gambling saloon he hopes to build. As Presbyterian Church and his business ventures grow, a Mrs. Constance Miller (Julie Christie) shows up, and immediately points out to McCabe the various flaws in the way he's set everything up. It's not long until Miller is in a partnership with McCabe, the madam of his brothel and a high-priced prostitute herself bringing clean and safe practices to the establishment, despite her opium habit. Before long, a couple of businessmen representing powerful interests offer to buy McCabe's holdings - he refuses them twice, hoping to negotiate a good deal, but they leave, insulted and done with negotiating. These people are known to solve problems through murder - and low men are on their way to Presbyterian Church to settle the manner through violence.

It's a simple story, and with McCabe & Mrs. Miller it's mood, character, setting and tension that dominate the film from the first reel. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, working in close conjunction with Robert Altman, creates a very unique and atmospheric tone from the start - primarily by "flashing" (slightly exposing) the film negative before printing, which helps bleed the light and clarity from the picture, making the film look as if it has aged and is coming to us from yesteryear. It was a daring gamble, but gives this film a look that is very much it's own. There is also an overwhelming preponderance of shots that use the zoom feature, something most cinematographers and filmmakers generally avoid, but something Altman often used in an experimental way - sometimes in a very rapid fashion, as if the camera itself has suddenly locked on to something, and sometimes very drawn out, as when we zoom into Mrs. Miller's eye and seemingly her mind. Zsigmond would eventually end up winning an Oscar for being Director of Photography on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and would be nominated a further three times (for The Deer Hunter, The River and The Black Dahlia.) He has created a visually rich and winsomely eccentric visual tapestry for this great film.

For the soundtrack, which is as perfect as this film's visuals, we have Leonard Cohen to thank - and McCabe & Mrs. Miller manages to stretch only three Cohen songs in various ways across the entire film. The lyrical and musical beauty of these tracks are wonderful by themselves, but the way they match the wistful, haunting film is perfect - so much so you'd swear they were written for the film itself - not lyrics-wise but in the emotional tone they set. Altman had been listening to one of Cohen's albums while he was helping edit the film (with Lou Lombardo) and contacted him when he realised the connection. Fortunately, Cohen was already a fan of Brewster McCloud and readily agreed with letting the director use his songs for the film. The songs used were "The Stranger Song", "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady" - they all came from Cohen's "Songs of Leonard Cohen" album. It was just happenstance, but at the same time feels anything but random that these songs ended up providing the musical background to McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The songs are evocative and powerful in the way they create a kind of romantic despair, and a poignant, stirring kind of charm and dreamy enchantment.

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie were wonderful in their roles, with Christie being nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress (losing to Jane Fonda in Klute.) Along with them were many of the regular Altman troupe. Michael Murphy (from That Cold Day in the Park, M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud), Rene Auberjonois, John Schuck and Corey Fischer (from M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud), Bert Remsen and Shelley Duvall (from Brewster McCloud) and Linda Sorensen (from The Cold Day in the Park). Keith Carradine made his feature debut, was quite solid as a young, inexperienced cowboy, and would feature in many future Altman films. While various carpenters and builders were creating the town of Presbyterian Church, as it slowly grows in the film, they were given period costumes and allowed to work as filming was underway, becoming the various tradesmen you see in the background of the film. Duvall is a real standout, though not having much screen time, she's memorable in only her second feature film after McCloud. Beatty's perfectionism clashed with Altman's freewheeling ways, but both actor and director can be proud of the end product regardless.

Of the three characters who come to town in the film's last stretch intent on killing McCabe, Hugh Millais (Butler) and Manfred Schulz (Kid) were making their debuts, and weren't really actors - but it's a testament to Altman's method that this isn't in the least bit noticeable. The production was lucky, with non-stop snow over numerous days giving the "chase" section of the film a certain ambiance that suits it so well. As McCabe - a "hero" who is not above winning a duel by shooting his opponent in the back - fights it out the townspeople try to save their church from fire. I really enjoyed this, for it completely isolates McCabe, and his aloneness becomes literal as well as symbolic. McCabe is afraid, and trying to hide. It's a refreshing and distinctive climax that sets this "western" apart from most others, even the likes of High Noon, where the knight in shining armor in the visage of Gary Cooper bravely faces his foes in the open. Also, unlike Grace Kelly, Julie Christie's Mrs. Miller is not there to face the reality of the situation - losing herself chasing the dragon, lost in her own world - a world like our own where the powerful and rich get to dictate their own happy endings.

Leon Ericksen, art director for That Cold Day in the Park, co-producer of M*A*S*H and involved with the makeup and art departments of Brewster McCloud returned again for Altman on this film, this time in the guise of production designer. The film was made in West Vancouver and Squamish, B.C on hilly terrain surrounded by forest. The look is very authentic, and Altman obviously had a close relationship with Ericksen and knew he could count on him. Ericksen would eventually be involved with the making of Star Wars, so his career was involved with making films at the very height of the industry, especially during the 1970s. Altman's second unit director, Lou Lombardo, had handled the editing of Brewster McCloud and this film as well - all of this seems typical of the ad hoc style Altman so successfully used to create his films - a kind of style that would bring most other filmmakers undone.

A review of McCabe & Mrs. Miller wouldn't be complete without one final major talking point - Altman's very unique way of recording and using conversation, with only snippets audible from here or there as characters move around, and at times people talking over each other at the same time. It was a kind of realism that Altman loved to experiment with, and he hoped that audiences would understand that they were only hearing what they needed to hear. That hearing every word of every conversation wasn't important in and of itself. It was something not all film reviewers realised, although many were already hailing this as a masterpiece. It is so different from other films that it can, at first, feel as though something is amiss with the film's sound. Often sound effects like footsteps will drown out what a character is saying - but it's all deliberate. Altman infused his film with a kind of realism, for in our day to day life, we sometimes only hear snippets of conversation, and not every word directed at us. We glean meaning from it regardless, and he didn't feel his film should be so clean in an auditory sense as to distance itself from how reality feels. It was a distinctive trademark of this director, and went back to the reason he was fired while Countdown was in the editing phase. He'd stuck to it, confident in his method.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller wasn't an immediate success. Pauline Kael was one of it's first champions, but it took time for it's audience to find it. I'm another one who is totally on board with how important and brilliant the film is. I loved it the first time I saw it, but when you watch it over you find many new things you missed the first time, and when you watch it after that, you'll find more that will surprise you. There is so much happening, and such beauty in it, that it never fails to completely steal all of my attention each and every time. There doesn't seem to be any familiarity building, despite the number of times I've watched it. It's so layered and textured, in so many senses, that it's a sure desert island film - if I were stranded I could still get lost in it, and just sit there admiring it's haunting and melancholic aura. I could never read Edmund Naughton's McCabe, for fear of contaminating what I love about the film so much - even though Altman has made many changes.

I hope I get the chance some time in the future to see this film at a cinema, as with all the films I hold in the greatest esteem. This one is sheer brilliance - in it's performances, filming, sound, screenplay and direction. In it's design, and execution. There was something magical about the way Altman guided projects - allowing all the contributors to contribute to the artistic side of filmmaking, making their own decisions, and listening to their ideas. It was a perfect balance, and the proof of that is in the results. It was the fourth film in a row (three for most) from Altman that I think was absolutely incredible, and worthy of championing to everyone who loves film and hasn't seen them yet. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is an ode to all the hustlers and hucksters who managed to swim too far out, and get in far above their heads - to all the pretenders who became a little too cocky, and should have listened to those close to them. It's a portrait of life on the frontier, big business, the little man, spirit and industry. Capitalism. One of the all-time great movies.

5

Holden Pike

03-03-23, 11:25 AM

I have been able to see McCabe & Mrs. Miller in the cinema several times. Always worth it. One of the titles I always keep an eye out for in the revival houses.

donniedarko

03-03-23, 12:53 PM

Have you seen The Long Goodbye? It's my favorite Altman, would love to read your review

Gideon58

03-03-23, 04:52 PM

My review of the film:

https://www.movieforums.com/reviews/1899304-the_long_goodbye.html

crumbsroom

03-03-23, 06:13 PM

Looking at Altman's filmography, I'm counting 12 movies of his that I hands down love. Left over are a number I really like and some fascinating failures. And as I've so far to see any of his supposed dogs, I'm struggling to think of any director that has a better track record with me.

Hitchcock? Bergman? I think those are the only others that might come close (and I have definitely seem some of their dogs, so their record is not nearly as clean)

crumbsroom

03-03-23, 06:57 PM

It's possible I've seen Beyond Therapy, and if my memory serves, that was terrible...so maybe Altman isn't without his sins

SpelingError

03-03-23, 07:12 PM

So far, none of his films dip into great territory for me, but I imagine he's the kind of director who grows on you over time.

PHOENIX74

03-03-23, 09:31 PM

Have you seen The Long Goodbye? It's my favorite Altman, would love to read your review

Yeah, I've seen it quite a while ago, and I look forward to reexamining it in detail. As I'm now intent on reviewing his films in sequential order, it'll be coming up soon - film after next, which will be Images.

It's possible I've seen Beyond Therapy, and if my memory serves, that was terrible...so maybe Altman isn't without his sins

It'll be interesting to see if going through his career in chronological order (I'll try to pick up a few biographical details as I go as well) will give me some idea as to how he reached such a nadir in that 1980s period.

So far, none of his films dip into great territory for me, but I imagine he's the kind of director who grows on you over time.

I think that's more true for Altman than for most other filmmakers.

SuperMetro

03-04-23, 01:05 AM

[CENTER]https://i.postimg.cc/Z5j1gy5j/mccabe.jpg

McCabe & Mrs. Miller - 1971

5

I tried to watch this last week before it left the channel, because I had a busy week ahead of me. However, an hour in, I started to get bored and too tired to watch it so I turned off the movie, fell asleep, and never finished it.

It must have been what Matt72582 felt the first time he watched The Grand Illusion.

This one, Jackie Brown, Paris Belongs to Us, and Out 1 are 4 movies that I watched at least an hour of, but failed to finish them. Because the movie left the channel, I guess I will have to use ok.ru to watch the movie or wait until it comes back to the channel. Like The Departed, it was a really good movie, but I just was not in the right mood to watch it when I saw it.

I think I was also disappointed as to how great Nashville and Three Women were, but did not get the same excitement out of this one. It still had a pretty cool main character in Warren Beatty and relaxing music by Leonard Cohen(Second film I saw since Exotica to feature his music).

crumbsroom

03-04-23, 06:10 PM

As someone who love McCabe and Mrs Miller, it's an admittedly hard movie to crack. As are most Altman's. So many of the important moments in his films are ones which are pushed into the background, or have to do with connections between characters you need to watch the movie multiple times to pick up on. But once you understand the world he has created, they have endless rewards. You are never finished watching an Altman film (at least his best ones).

With the exception of Three Women and Images, both of which I adored immediately, pretty much everything else needed a second viewing for me to get a handle on. I actually think I had to watch Nashville about five times before I even knew what to do with it. It seemed like it spread itself to thin between all those characters, but when you begin to see how much he can say about a person in a fleeting moment he captures with his camera, the more and more clear it becomes that he undestands his characters so well he can distill their essence down to a single look they give. Or a throw away line of dialogue.

All of his greatest films are worth giving the time to. Hes a miracle director

PHOENIX74

03-08-23, 01:45 AM

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Images - 1972

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Robert Altman & Susannah York

Starring Susannah York, René Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi, Cathryn Harrison
Hugh Millais & John Morley

Robert Altman had already touched on the theme of madness in That Cold Day in the Park when Images came along, but his thought processes and preparation for the latter went back as far as the mid-60s. With the likes of Persona, Psycho and Repulsion all being artistic triumphs in that decade, it stands to reason a filmmaker interested in exploring every theme and genre he could would want to see where this took him. What he ended up with was an extraordinary film buried by the sands of time - and while it was never one that would be universally accepted by all, it deserves consideration at least. If one is the least bit interested, they owe it to themselves to seek it out and decide for themselves. This is a psychological horror film that succeeds completely in putting you into the mind of it's central character, and unleashes hell - unrelenting, claustrophobic, tension-filled and lurking in every crevice. As per usual for this filmmaker, decisions that were especially adroit and enhanced this film were made on the fly, suggested by whomever had that moment of inspiration then and there.

Cathryn (Susannah York), a writer of children's fiction, waits alone at home for husband Hugh (Rene Auberjonois) to return from work. A friend calls, but it's not long before her friend's voice is interrupted by a stranger who makes disturbing implications about Hugh - and this stranger calls again, and again. When Hugh gets home, Cathryn has a moment when her husband turns into a completely different person. Obviously, Cathryn is very sick. The two decide to retire for relaxation to their country cottage, where Cathryn keeps on spotting herself in the distance - and keeps on having mental lapses, to Hugh's consternation. Soon Cathryn is being visited by an ex-lover who is long dead, Rene (Marcel Bozzuffi), and when Marcel (Hugh Millais) and his daughter Susannah (Cathryn Harrison) come to visit real people begin to take on the visage of others. There's no telling who is really there, and who each person who is there really is. Cathryn can only live with this fear for so long, and she begins killing the people she's convinced aren't really there. At least, she'd better hope they're not really there.

We get into Cathryn's head in a number of ways. First of all, we hear her recite the book she's writing in her mind - "In Search of Unicorns", a children's fantasy that Susannah York wrote in real life. When Altman found out about this proclivity of York's, he suggested it be used in the film, and the end result is why you see her credited as one of the screenwriters. The hypnotic recitation she gives furthers the mood of the film - strange passages beyond our grasp float by, and it's hard to not feel a little creeped out by the way she softly speaks each passage, almost in a dreamy haze, but also as if she's enacting some kind of mystic spell. We hear her speak of strange creatures and a heroine often in peril, and the danger bleeds through into the story. This reading of her book comes and goes, often in the background and seemingly representing her thoughts when she's alone - it automatically puts me into Cathryn's mind, and since we see everything from her perspective that's where we stay for the film's entirety.

Another aspect of the film which underlines it's psychological tone, and does so in a brilliant manner, is John Williams' score. I can't emphasise enough how incredible this score is - and while it might be hyperbole to claim that this or that score is among the best I've ever heard, I can easily say with confidence that it sits within my top 100 film scores of all time. Freaky, discordant, atonal, frightening and fascinating, it's something that seems to take various musical instruments into unhappy places and misuse. We initially hear simple, easy piano melodies, but as we descend with Cathryn into madness strings, drums and all manner of sources cry out and pound in extreme and uneasy wailing. Added to it are sounds specifically made by Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta for Williams to add to the music - they consist of things like strange screams, and haunting instrumental wails. Williams was nominated for an Oscar - it would be only the third Oscar ceremony he'd go to being nominated for at least one, and he'd already won one for the Fiddler on the Roof score, one of five he's managed to win in his illustrious career. (The Oscar, strangely, went to 1952 Charlie Chaplin film Limelight - it had waited 20 years for release in the United States. Since Chaplin was credited as one of the composers, this represents Chaplin's only Oscar win.)

Adding to the sonic is the visual, and for Images Altman had cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond return to work for him again after McCabe & Mrs. Miller - once again making use of rapid movement and rapid zooms to convey shock and surprise. Altman was not stepping back at all from his desire to use the zoom function more than other filmmakers. There are some especially haunting shots, such as one where Cathryn spots a vision of herself down at her country estate while standing on a distant hilltop, and then in reverse we switch to Cathryn heading inside while we see a vision of Cathryn still standing on that same hill in the distance - she's seemingly split in two - though this isn't the first time she hallucinates. The Irish countryside, where this was filmed, was made great use of in it's verdant greens, but when the camera focuses on Susannah York it can be at angles that suggest the off-center nature of her fractured mind. It's a virtuoso piece of work that managed to snag Zsigmond a nomination for a BAFTA for Best Cinematography in 1973, in conjunction with his great work on Deliverance and McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Aided by excellence in sound and behind the camera, Susannah York stepped up in a difficult role, and she ended up winning Best Actress at Cannes when the film premiered there. Returning from M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud and McCabe & Mrs. Miller was René Auberjonois, playing Hugh, Cathryn's wife. A role that wasn't as challenging. Also returning from McCabe & Mrs. Miller was Hugh Millais in a more testing role that he seems to have done with ease, despite not really being an actor before appearing in these two Altman films. Cathryn Harrison debuted, and Marcel Bozzuffi plays his part without ease due to the fact that he wasn't a fluent speaker of English. The supporting roles don't matter too much though, as this film is rigidly focused on Cathryn, her relationships, and her hallucinations which increase in frequency as the film goes on. We're never absolutely sure if what we're seeing is real or not - even a dog, presumably long gone, surprises and scares Cathryn by showing up. Something might not be there at all, but at the same time it might be there and simply taking on a different form.

Images is one of the great mood films - with only a rough screenplay, Altman once again encouraged the actors and crew to add their own ideas and direction to it while it was being made. His enjoyment of filmmaking seems to have been a desire to experiment with the ways they can be enhanced by this cooperative approach, and once again he created a spellbinding motion picture - albeit one with limited appeal. It was this difficulty in even imagining what it's audience might be that led to the film being very quietly released in few places - which is a pity. It left Images a film to slowly find an audience when other avenues were available to see it, and an underseen Robert Altman gem from his 1970s period of explosive creativity and amazing filmmaking skill and invention. It's mood is reminiscent of his 1969 film That Cold Day in the Park, which also had a tighter focus on one woman and her perspective. It's a film made with complete artistic integrity, for it's immediately obvious that it's mainstream commercial appeal is limited, and that this is really a thinking person's cinematic odyssey. To say that it's flown under the radar is an understatement.

Graeme Clifford, 2nd unit director and assistant to Altman on That Cold Day in the Park and McCabe & Mrs. Miller is credited as editor, and his input into the making of Images was a large step-up in his career. He'd end up editing a film with a very similar vibe - 1973 Nicolas Roeg film Don't Look Now, before moving on to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Man Who Fell to Earth. He became a fully-fledged director himself when he made 1982 film Frances. On the production design side of matters, long-time stalwart Leon Ericksen once again helped Altman transform is ideas into reality, and played a large part in this phase of Altman's career. Images ended up being nominated for Best English-Language Foreign Film at the Golden Globes and Altman himself received a Writers Guild of America nomination for the screenplay, even though it was loosely followed, and improved upon by many outside contributors. The reviews it received were mostly positive, but none of them had the stamp of approval that the likes of McCabe and Mrs. Miller got from Pauline Kael.

I think that Images is the kind of film you need to see several times to get the most out of. The pace and mood take a little getting used to, and we're thrown in at the deep end almost immediately, almost before we're ready and have adjusted ourselves to Cathryn's reality. You also have to be prepared for never being really comfortable - as far as Cathryn's break with reality is concerned, this film is relentless. From her phone interruptions at the start to her killing spree in the film's last act, you feel the tension she carries around with her to a large degree. Even her laughter seems laced with tightness and strain. Cathryn is surrounded by characters who don't really seem to care enough to see how much she's suffering. Even though she has several moments that point to her condition, they all seem to be brushed off by Hugh and forgotten. That lack of adequate caring increases the feeling of isolation and fear which she transmits so well to the audience. In this respect, Images really is a horror film that burrows under your skin in this fashion.

All up, with this film's score, cinematography by Zsigmond, sound, acting from York and direction from Altman you get a first-rate, psychologically-pounding film which seeps with tension-filled disorientation. When you consider this film in comparison with others of it's era, it sits right next to the likes of Don't Look Now, Repulsion and Persona with an elemental richness that's hard to fault, no matter how hard you look at it. Everything works in this, as long as you're not expecting a narrative journey with twists and turns, and instead tune into a feature that will creep on your nerves and perhaps lead to an unexpected nightmare or two. For me, it's up there as one of those Altman films like That Cold Day in the Park which just passed by unnoticed, but which I rate as something quite special made by a fearless filmmaker who wasn't going to bend to the mainstream despite his newfound success. If you decide not to watch the film, I still advise you to look up that film score and listen to it. Such a strange and wonderful accompaniment to this film. Strange and wonderful all up, this film is. A forgotten Altman classic.

4

PHOENIX74

03-19-23, 02:31 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/RVmJffpR/the-long-goodbye.jpg

The Long Goodbye - 1973

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Leigh Brackett
Based on the novel "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler

Starring Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell
Henry Gibson & Jim Bouton

The longer you look at The Long Goodbye the more remarkable it seems, and the better sense you get of what you should be focusing on. In a neo-noir film based on a 1953 Raymond Chandler novel you'd think it would be the mystery - but this is more Robert Altman movie than Raymond Chandler story - character, atmosphere and a heady blend of themes create a work of art far from your typical noir story. Elliott Gould's Philip Marlowe becomes a private investigator from the 1950s trapped in the 1970s - and many questions remain ambiguously unanswered. Chandler's Long Goodbye has been infected by a different time, with different moralities. The ever-smoking, wisecrack-master washes through a world where topless, acid-dropping yoga enthusiasts work out opposite his apartment, hoodlums scar their lovers to make a point and truth becomes harder and harder to grasp. It's a world so changed that Marlowe has become a kind of child-like, innocent spectator - loyal to his friends and pets to the last, at a time when loyalty has gone extinct.

During a sleepless night, after trying to please his fussy cat, Philip Marlowe is visited by his only friend, Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) who is sporting some impressive wounds on his cheek. Lennox speaks of having had a massive fight with his wife, and asks to be driven to Tijuana. The next day the police come looking for Marlowe - it seems that Terry has actually murdered his wife, and until Marlowe gives the cops information they'll hold him as an accessory. When Terry's body is found in an apparent suicide, they let Marlowe go - but the private investigator is sure that Terry is innocent - he knows him too well. In the meantime, he gets a job offer from an Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt) whose husband, Roger (Sterling Hayden) has gone on another bender and is missing. Marlowe tracks down a Dr. Verringer (Henry Gibson) who is trying to extort money from Roger, and brings him home. He's also visited by gangster Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) who threatens to kill Marlowe unless he recovers the $350,000 that Terry took with him the night he went to Tijuana. When Roger commits suicide, and Marlowe finds out that he may have killed Terry Lennox's wife, he begins to suspect that Terry's suicide is not what it seems, and heads to Tijuana to chase down the truth.

Many questions remain unanswered, even after the big, dramatic reveal at the end of the film. Screenwriter Leigh Brackett really made the story her own - she'd previously written the screenplay for The Big Sleep, which featured Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe, and her surprise ending along with other quirks caught Altman's eye and imagination. He made sure that he wouldn't be forced to change these aspects of her screenplay, and this is how we got the Long Goodbye we have - a film which simply grows and grows in stature as the decades pass. On it's initial screenings, touted as being a straight noir/mystery/detective story, audiences were mystified and upset - it was then that the studio executives and distributors realised they had something different on their hands. It wasn't straightforward. That's the crux of this movie - you can't approach it like that, because the heart and soul of the film is in what it captures thematically onscreen. The loyal and bewildered Marlowe, the world he inhabits and the characters that contribute to the concoction of a strange Los Angeles society where morals and mores have shifted. For this, Elliott Gould gives what is perhaps the greatest performance of his career - for good reason, for his career was nearly over and he needed this.

Behind the lens, once again, Altman had cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond doing the director of photography work. Zsigmond had been with Altman on McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Images - Altman once again taking advantage of Zsigmond's proclivity to "flash" the negatives he'd use - exposing them to sunlight so they'd fade a little and turn bright colours into more subdued pastels, darkening the image. It creates the kind of atmosphere that seems to send 1970s L.A. back into the 40s and 50s in visual feel. He also demanded that the camera never rest or be static - it doesn't mean that we're careening all over the place or constantly in motion, but you'll notice that we're never completely still, and even static shots have a little bit of sway and movement to them - along with a little zoom, which shows up often. It does give the impression of being inside the picture. There's also a lot of reflectino and obfuscation. Altman has his own, recognizable visual style by this point in his filmmaking career, and The Long Goodbye is very much a part of his 1970s free-flowing technique. Zsigmond won a National Society of Film Critics Award for his work on this film.

Music-wise, The Long Goodbye is very eccentric. It opens and closes with the old Richard A. Whiting song "Hooray for Hollywood" - and you could probably go mad trying to figure out why, which is possibly (considering Altman) the reason it's there. The rest of the film either features or is scored with the same song, played over and over again in differing styles, with different instruments and/or with different singers. Written by John Williams and Johnny Mercer, "The Long Goodbye" is a jazz-like slow number that fits the noir style of the film, although at different times it morphs into whatever situation it's needed in. You'll hear the same song and tune over and over again - and it's something that's pushed to the forefront of the film. It's an attention-getting method of creating the musical accompaniment to the film, and very Robert Altman-like in it's experimental nature and in the way it absolutely fits. It almost feels as if the changes in tune relate to the changes in society, mood, character and meaning we see in the film. The same song, but a different tune - it's an actual saying which takes on a literal form here, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that this is very deliberate.

Lou Lombardo, editor of Brewster McCloud and McCabe & Mrs. Miller returned to edit this film, doing excellent work yet again. Tommy Thompson, who had been assistant director on Brewster McCloud and McCabe and Mrs. Miller along with being a producer on Images was assistant again and would work with Altman on countless other films. Acting-wise, there wasn't any return of the Altman ensemble we'd see in so many films, though of course Elliott Gould had featured in M*A*S*H, as had David Arkin, who plays Augustine underling Harry. Stephen Coit, who plays a police detective, featured in Altman film Countdown, and Jack Riley, who has a very small role, was in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. All in all, the film wasn't a big hit when it was released, but caught on like a cinematic snowball over the years as it accumulated more and more fans - until it became the much talked about staple of film lovers today - often reissued and broadcast, shown again at theaters and becoming a classic. Pauline Kael gave it a long, positive review in The New Yorker, and Roger Ebert praised it. Gene Siskel gave it three and a half out of four stars - calling it "a most satisfying motion picture" - but box office success wasn't in the offing, for The Long Goodbye was still far from being mainstream entertainment.

The Long Goodbye is packed with little pieces of trivia, and has an assortment of surprise guest performers on it's margins. David Carradine turns up in a jail cell, espousing hippie wisdom in a casual, measured fashion - a delightful surprise for those unprepared. Arnold Schwarzenegger is an even bigger surprise, appearing nearly a decade before his breakout starring roles in Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator - he has no lines, but draws all of our attention as a heavy in Augustine's office, at one point undressing to his underwear. Elliott Gould glances at him and laughs - and that probably wasn't in the screenplay, for as per usual the cast were encouraged to ad-lib and many of the scenes were improvised in this way. It was the way Altman liked to work, and it gave him naturalistic results. The film overflows with extra touches - Zsigmond captures a lot of action in reflections, sometimes showing us two images at once, and he sometimes shoots through things, distorting and interrupting the flow of what we can see. All of this is what makes Altman films so enjoyable to watch - and he's at his peak working on The Long Goodbye.

This film can't be fully encapsulated in one review. It's one of a thousand little touches, half a dozen great performances (including a couple from a baseball player and film director) and an Altman/Zsigmond peak of visual acuity. It's less a neo-noir as it is a film about the neo-noir genre and Marlowe character. However, it's more than that, and it's always misleading to pin one label on The Long Goodbye. The film's beginning features a protracted lesson to us on how loyal Marlowe is to his cat, and a frivolous illustration of a funny story Altman heard about a friend trying to mislead his fussy feline by switching cat food and cans - so you never know where it might lead. Instead of a mystery that starts out muddied and becomes clear - everything starts out perfectly clear and by the end of the film we have a million questions. It's not only endlessly rewatchable, but improves on every subsequent watch as you notice more and more detail you missed the first, second and third time around. What more could you ask for from a film? Any more doesn't seem possible. What seems on the surface perfectly suited to it's genre, is something that's anarchic, rebellious and of a piece with Altman's other films. It's Altman's noir - there's never been anything like it, and there never will be again.

4.5

PHOENIX74

03-24-23, 07:24 AM

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Thieves Like Us - 1974

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Joan Tewkesbury
Based on the novel "Thieves Like Us" by Edward Anderson

Starring Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, John Schuck, Bert Remsen
Louise Fletcher & Tom Skerritt

In an article titled "Love and Coca-Cola", Pauline Kael wrote that Thieves Like Us was perhaps the "closest to flawless of Altman's films - a masterpiece." It certainly has a puzzlingly low profile for such a great piece of cinematic art. It's a film that is what it is - there's no pretense to any deeper meanings you'd ascribe to it that don't fit the main narrative, and it's a film of it's time, with Bonnie and Clyde setting the tone in 1967 for period-rich bank robbing outlaw films set in depression era America. The way Altman has worked Edward Anderson's novel (for once adapted faithfully by a filmmaker notorious for doing otherwise) puts us in the picture - the characters aren't oversized mythical figures, as they are in Arthur Penn's classic along with the likes of Dillinger (1973) or Big Bad Mama (1974) which come from this same era. Instead we're transported by way of radio, lush cinematography and clever production design to a place and time that almost feels familiar. It feels like the most assured film from one of the most assured directors of his time - and it's another classic 1970s Altman film that I absolutely love.

Young and good natured Bowie (Keith Carradine), the big bodied Chicamaw (John Schuck) and older "T-Dub" (Bert Remsen) escape from a Mississippi prison after being appointed trustees by hijacking a taxi - it's 1936, and the three hide out at the auto-repair garage owned by Dee Mobley (Tom Skerritt) and his daughter Keechie (Shelley Duvall). There, they plan their next meet-up, which will lead to another bank robbery and another hide-out, this time at the home of relative Mattie (Louise Fletcher - in her first feature film role.) When they leave this time, Bowie is involved in a particularly nasty traffic accident, and Chicamaw must shoot two lawmen dead to escape the scene without being apprehended. Bowie recuperates back at Mobley's place, and it's while being looked after by Keechie that the two fall in love. They get themselves a place out of the way, and find an enjoyable pace of life - but when Bowie meets Chicamaw and T-Dub again, he robs another bank again - which results in another killing. With the heat from both the law and the general population becoming intense, and with Keechie falling pregnant, the young man has to hope he's making the right decisions if he's to survive and start a family.

Joan Tewkesbury had simply been a script supervisor on McCabe & Mrs. Miller when she was suddenly conscripted into the Altman filmmaking machine and asked to play a small role in the film. Now she was being asked by him to adapt Edward Anderson's 1937 novel and Altman's faith in her paid off - he was pleased enough with what she'd done that instead of continuing on his freewheeling ways, he'd stick to the script and story - while still allowing the actors to improvise lines in the context of individual scenes. It would be one of the first screenplays he'd not throw in the trash can - and when production on Thieves Like Us started Altman sent Tewkesbury to Nashville to investigate the country music scene up there for a film he was intending to make. In the end, Nashville (1975) would be based on her diary and experiences there. You can sense that Altman's instinctive intuition with Tewkesbury was right on the money, and although both Calder Willingham and Robert Altman would be given screenwriting credits, this is her movie. It was only after production had started that Altman would find out that the book had been adapted once already, as They Live by Night in 1948.

On this film, once again, he'd have his stable of regular performers comfortably playing their part, and helping to bring their characters alive - you can sense the depth they have, as if they're real living people. Keith Carradine, of the famous Carradine acting family, had debuted in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. John Schuck had been with Altman a while, and featured in M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Bert Remsen had been part of Brewster McCloud's casting department when he was conscripted as an actor on the film - played his scene brilliantly, and found himself appearing in McCabe & Mrs. Miller before this. Shelley Duvall had been discovered by Altman in Texas and was introduced in Brewster McCloud to great effect. She also had a part in McCabe & Mrs. Miller - touchingly, also opposite the young Keith Carradine, making this a kind of sweet reunion for the two lovestruck characters. Tom Skerritt had appeared in M*A*S*H. The comfort and familiarity he had with his actors makes Altman's films as warm as they are. Louise Fletcher is fantastic in her role as well, and is very well cast as a prim, proper and strict housewife having to contend with a family that's either in prison or causing her trouble.

There had been a change in director of photography - French cinematographer Jean Boffety was behind the lens after a series of films Altman had done with Vilmos Zsigmond. It's my opinion that Boffety probably should have been given an Oscar nomination for the cinematography he's done on Thieves Like Us - it's such a visually lush film, full of the green topography of Mississippi and he captures this in many different ways from different perspectives. He also follows the lead of his director by shooting many scenes through windows and flywire - and past obstructions, giving us that voyeur's view and sense of diffusion. Of course, it wouldn't be an Altman film without the occasionally delightful zoom in or zoom out - now a kind of calling card that's instantly recognizable. Every shot - lengthy or short, long or close-up, is framed beautifully, and just looks extraordinarily good. I love the look Thieves Like Us has - aided by filming on location and not on sets. Boffety, not being from the U.S., felt compelled to take on the challenge of filming in Mississippi - a place most cinematographers like to avoid. The landscapes, tracking and dolly shots (including a wonderful, high-speed, road shot that was only possible because a new road had just been created parallel to an old one) all take on a note of perfection.

There's no score to the film - instead we get a consistent dose of 1936/7 radio as a background to everything that goes on in the film. It works really well, and aside from the music which helps to ground us in this place, time and circumstance there are many serials which involve crime and crime fighters, painting a picture of the national mood as far as gangsters and criminal activity is concerned. When Bowie and Keechie first start making love we get a radio adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that repeats as much as their lovemaking repeats. All wonderfully inventive and done with a filmmakers instinct that had no peer at the time. Thieves Like Us is a great film that was hardly promoted or noticed on release - and it's one that has yet to be properly discovered. You hear a collection of old songs and tunes, from the likes of Johnny Mercer, Victor Herbert, Irving Mills and Lew Brown. We simply roll along with our characters as the radio is on in the background, and it feels natural - but it's expertly guided and purposely arranged to fit the mood and circumstance of each moment.

The first time I watched Thieves Like Us it took me by surprise - I was expecting to see something more fringe from such a low-budget 1970s feature, but this has the feel of classic - a top of the line, wonderfully acted, beautifully captured film that is a pleasure to watch. The way the characters slowly change, from an almost adolescent immature happiness into three distinct characters that all have their troubling and fateful flaws, has a perfect timing to it. The rhythm, of the story and scenes, seems perfect. It's so appealing in it's sights and sounds. The story is hard-edged, but slants towards love, kinship and friendship to such a degree murders only register fully on Bowie's face, which we read so clearly that we trust him as a kind of moral arbiter - one that is ironically also a killer. There's no pretension - the film is made up of perfectly normal day-to-day moments of the innocuous which add up to something greater, and these moments are only briefly interrupted by events of more magnitude - and even the bigger moments play as everyday. It feels like the most honest, realistic and personal of depression-era crime thrillers.

Now, there's a product which dominates this film - Coca-Cola. The characters seem obsessed with it, and Coca-Cola advertisements are everywhere. There's even a Coca-Cola wagon that creeps along a street with a giant bottle of Coke in the back - and there are empty bottles of Coke, or else the characters are drinking Coke, in every scene. Emanuel Levy wrote that this represented an "icon of popular culture" and that Coke was "one of the few unifying objects in an increasingly diversified society" - that people of all classes could afford to drink it. He also said that this was "only a superficial equality" and functioned as a kind of "opium to the masses" - distracting them from the turmoil of depression era life in the 30s. He connects it to the superficial camaraderie the main characters have - and that becomes clearer as the film goes on and the characters solidify into three distinct people under pressure. However it's interpreted, it's one part of Thieves Like Us that stands out as interpretive and obviously being there for a reason. The story by itself is good enough to be entertaining, but there's that little iconography in the foreground of the film as an added bonus - one that could easily be misinterpreted as product placement, although a little too extreme even for that.

In the end it's another film which attains greatness in this 1970s Altman period - and while McCabe & Mrs. Miller has since received it's due, Thieves Like Us has continued to lurk in the background, remaining a film most people haven't seen. Bank robberies, the depression, guns and of course early 20th Century cars (usually with bullet holes) represent a newfound fascination with an era of crime that was unique to this time period - and I'd say that Thieves Like Us is my favourite film pertaining to this style and subject. It brings with it that Altman sense of grounded reality and applies it to subjects that were often mythologised. In through this walk the likes of Shelley Duvall, with her haunting eyes but jaunty tone, and the young fresh-faced Keith Carradine - all boyish charm and innocence despite having already shot someone to death before escaping prison. I've never seen the likes of characters such as these. Topping it off is how beautiful Mississippi looks in it's green resplendence, and how distinct American culture was as captured by a new national obsession - the radio. It makes for a film that should really have been a big hit - but it seems that this particular director confounded those operating the conveyer belt of cookie-cutter movies that were the opium of the masses back then. It deserves it's reconsideration.

4.5

crumbsroom

03-24-23, 06:23 PM

I should probably give that movie another chance.

It's maybe one of two Altman films I actively dont like. Not sure yet. I only just started OC and Stiggs

PHOENIX74

03-25-23, 12:03 AM

I should probably give that movie another chance.

It's maybe one of two Altman films I actively dont like. Not sure yet. I only just started OC and Stiggs

I would give Thieves Like Us another go - so often a second viewing knowing what I'm in for changes the game dramatically, and it's a top-shelf Altman film.

I'm actually looking forward to seeing what on earth Altman's post-Popeye 80s films are like - out of sheer curiosity.

PHOENIX74

03-31-23, 04:19 AM

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California Split - 1974

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Joseph Walsh

Starring George Segal, Elliott Gould, Ann Prentiss & Gwen Welles

Someone I was once close to (he has since passed on) had a gambling problem, and watching California Split almost made me wish I could find my way into that mindset. In this Robert Altman film a special friendship is forged amongst the risk-taking heat of the thronging masses at racetracks, poker dens and casinos between a memorable pair of characters - genuine, and improbable when you get a sense of how different the two personalities are. It seems like a complete understanding of a state of mind between them - a brotherhood forged in battle where your lifeblood is measured in dollars and cents. It's another arena which suits the documentary-like style of this director, the mise en scène an Altman-like host of extras doing what they'd ordinarily be doing in places where it's really happening. If I weren't already used to this in Altman films it might take me longer to orientate myself - but now I almost expect it, and sit myself at a nearby poker table to eavesdrop on what's happening here.

Charlie Waters (Elliott Gould) finds himself in a dispute with a quick-tempered, overbearing man (played by the screenwriter's brother, Edward Walsh) at the poker tables when he's backed up by Bill Denny (George Segal) with whom he drinks after spotting the quiet, contemplative man at a nearby bar. The two start a friendship which is strengthened when they're both robbed and later end up in jail together - Charlie brings Bill over to his place and he meets the confident Barbara Miller (Ann Prentiss) and her polar opposite, Susan Peters (Gwen Welles). Under Charlie's influence, Bill skips work and joins him at the racetrack where the two share a big win, sending Bill over the edge into a gambling addiction that's soon enough upsetting Bill's creditors and others to whom he's not paying what's owed. When Charlie returns from a trip to Tijuana, Bill sells as many of his possessions as he can so that he can pool his money with him and enter a high stakes, $2000 buy-in poker game in Reno. But if Bill wins the money he needs to get even, and then some, will he be able to stop?

This film is really anchored by superb performances from Elliott Gould and George Segal - I'd hesitate to call Gould's act "naturalistic" for he's a kind of keyed-up, wild sort of character, but they both feel grounded and real-world kind of people. Obviously both actors were given great leeway to make the roles their own and ad-lib lines - this is an Altman film after all - but there was a screenplay guiding them, and both Charlie and Bill are very well defined. The difference between them makes the film interesting, as the lifestyle of both seem to make their friendship an odd sort of close co-operative partnership. Segal was at first perturbed by Gould's manic energy and loud manner, complaining to Altman that he was drowning out his own performance - but this is what the director was looking for. "He is absolutely strangling me to death" Segal complained, "I don’t even know what to do." Screenwriter Joseph Walsh, whose story was based on his own battle with a gambling addiction, advised the actor to keep on going the way he had been - letting Gould be the dominant, clamorous half of the duo. Gwen Welles also makes an impression as a quiet, emotionally sensitive hooker who lives with Charlie and Barbara. She often falls in love with her clients.

Altman chose his director of photography based on the fact that he didn't want California Split to be overly beautified or attractive in a visual sense. Since he thought a good few better known cinematographers might find it hard to resist their impulse to do this, he hired the inexperienced Paul Lohmann (who he'd keep on for Nashville). The two created one of Altman's more subdued films as far as cinematography goes, and everything is presented in a very straightforward, typical way. Old pal Leon Ericksen was on board as art director having previously worked on That Cold Day in the Park, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Images for the filmmaker on his long run of artistic success. Another long-time collaborator, Lou Lombardo, worked in the editing suite putting the film together with O. Nicholas Brown. The film is much less focused on stylized visuals than other Altman films are, and is a little more straightforward while still maintaining the general feel of what his movies are like.

One item that does a lot to make this immediately recognizable as an Altman film is the sound - and for the first time on this film he had the opportunity to play around with an experimental eight-track sound system. This enabled him to control the volume of individual actors while maintaining that trademark "actors talking over each other" style he'd been playing around with ever since he started making feature films. It gave him the opportunity to let us hear exactly what he wanted us to hear dialogue-wise, and also use the overlapping dialogue to give extras and supporting actors little moments in the film they wouldn't otherwise have had. It does add to the atmosphere of the film - and provides a kind of continuity you feel when watching this one particular director's movies. It was much more exacting, and considering we spend a lot of time in gambling dens, at poker tables and the racetrack, being able to pinpoint a voice in the crowd for just one moment is a great strength to have for this film. Kay Rose, who won a special Academy Award for her work on 1985 film The River was sound editor on California Split.

The music is what we hear from pianos in poker bars, or drunken revelries. Although John Williams wrote no music for the film, his wife, actress Barbara Ruick, played a small role as a bartender near the end of the film and unfortunately died on location of a cerebral hemorrhage in her hotel room. Ruick was only 43 years old and the film is dedicated to her. Many of the extras you see are members of Synanon - an organisation for ex-addicts that eventually turned into a cult which was disbanded in the early 1990s. In fact, while the movie was being shot on location many of the cast and crew would gamble at various casinos - encouraged by the general atmosphere which helped foster the real feeling of the film. Essentially it was about how it felt to be a gambling addict, and also how some people become one along with the type of personality that gambling usually attracts. This is what led Joseph Walsh, after having his own experiences, to write the screenplay with the help of Steven Spielberg, who was once attached to direct it at MGM. After taking it to Universal, Spielberg went on to direct The Sugarland Express and the screenplay went on to get the attention of Robert Altman.

So, overall this might not be one of Altman's greatest films during this productive 1970s period, but it's still a damned fine piece of cinema and worthy of being considered a great success in how it came out. Many gambling addicts can relate to everything that happens in it - the superstitions, the highs and lows, the urge to gamble money on virtually anything at any time and the emptiness that constantly demands to be filled by risk. Bert Remsen (Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us) makes another appearance (in drag) and we get to see Jeff Goldblum at the very start of his feature film career (he'd only had a small role as a young punk in Death Wish to this point.) It has that feeling of realness about it - that you're watching real people interacting in real situations, like so many other Altman films. Many consider it to be one of the best films about gambling - and it still goes on to make many Top 10s when that subject is raised. The actors are at their best - inhabiting their characters, and we become very involved in their lives, not being told who they are through exposition, but picking it up ourselves. California Split comes through a winner, and I very much enjoyed seeing it for the first time - it won't be the last because so many Altman films have further rewards in store for those who come back.

4

crumbsroom

03-31-23, 02:31 PM

California Split is a totally overlooked Altman. I sort of love it

Gideon58

03-31-23, 05:17 PM

I've never seen California Split and keep meaning to and it keeps slipping my mind. I am going to get around to it someday.

PHOENIX74

04-15-23, 12:17 AM

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Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson - 1976

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Alan Rudolph & Robert Altman
Based on the play "Indians" by Arthur Kopit

Starring Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Kevin McCarthy, Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson
Allan F. Nicholls, Geraldine Chaplin, John Considine, Burt Lancaster & Bert Remsen

One straightforward theme, or point to make - the legends of the old Wild West were inventions. Their feats were exaggerated, or either completely made-up. Their heroism more or less equated with bloodthirsty, opportunistic murder and mayhem. Their mythical status built by the show business power and ethos prevalent during the 1800s, where entertainment and history are mutually exclusive and incompatible with each other. On the other side of the coin, Native Americans were portrayed as savage, barbarous and ruthlessly cruel inhuman beasts with no honor or dignity - cowardly, sneaky and untrustworthy. Americans who grow up reading about the likes of Buffalo Bill might find it hard to equate his image with reality, but Robert Altman's film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson tried to paint a portrait of the man in his own very distinctive cinematic style. That he set out to do this during the United States Bicentennial celebrations, at at time when the naked truth was only just starting to seep into the American consciousness meant that many critics and moviegoers couldn't fully enjoy this one.

In 1869, a 23-year-old William Frederick Cody met publisher, journalist, and writer Ned Buntline. Cody was a scout for the U.S. army, and at times hunted buffalo for Kansas Pacific Railroad workers, who nicknamed him Buffalo Bill - and Buntline used him in fictional tales about Cody's adventures on the frontier. The popularity of these stories prompted Cody to travel to Chicago in 1872 to pursue a career on the stage, and he featured in several productions until founding the Buffalo Bill Combination, a Wild West show in 1874, touring for 10 years. In 1883 he created a circus-like attraction called Buffalo Bill's Wild West, where he performed re-enactments of various feats he's said to have accomplished, and within a few more years he'd formed a partnership with Nate Salsbury and Evelyn Booth and formed Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Band. The show featured famed performers such as Annie Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler. There were re-enactments of the Pony Express, Indian attacks on wagon trains, stagecoach robberies and Custer's Last Stand. The show would usually end with an Indian attack on a settler's cabin, where Cody and a group of cowboys would ride in to the rescue.

Altman's movie begins in 1885, with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in full swing. Paul Newman plays "Buffalo Bill" Cody, a pompous and pampered man approaching his 40s who has grown over time to believe in the invented feats Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster) wrote about. Everything about him is fake - he wears a wig, is afraid of birds and his pistols spray buckshot so he can't miss the targets he can't hit. Annie Oakley (Geraldine Chaplin) is the main attraction apart from himself, with her husband Frank Butler (John Considine) always nervous about getting shot by a stray Oakley bullet. Into his show comes infamous Indian Chief Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) and his interpreter William Halsey (Will Sampson) - and Cody is taken aback when they refuse to play the part of cowardly, dastardly Indians attacking Custer. Instead, Chief Sitting Bull wants to play a part in a show that illustrates Army troops massacring unarmed Native Americans - men, women, children, and even the dogs. He wants to tell the crowd about dishonoured treaties and lies. Sitting Bull's dignified manner, and ability to win the support of the crowd without resorting to theatrics, starts to play on Buffalo Bill's mind, and eventually even his soul.

Along with Newman and Lancaster, Altman brings along some of his old hands and introduces some very capable acting talent to this, another broad ensemble effort. Kevin McCarthy as publicist Maj. John Burke is a welcome face, as I often enjoy watching this amiable performer. Harvey Keitel is among the cast, as a relative and something of a hanger-on to Bill Cody - he appears in this the same year he appeared in Scorsese's Taxi Driver, marking his ascent. Shelley Duvall, as First Lady Mrs. Grover Cleveland, makes her 5th appearance in an Altman film, after being in Nashville, Thieves Like Us, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Brewster McCloud. For Bert Remsen, as The Bartender, this was the 6th go-around after appearing in all of the films Duvall did plus California Split. Allan F. Nichols, Geraldine Chapman (as Annie Oakley) and Robert DoQui had all appeared in Altman's huge previous production Nashville, and John Considine (as Annie Oakley's manager and husband, Frank Butler) had appeared in California Split. You can tell that some actors really thrive with the freedom Altman gives his performers, and some, like Keitel, struggle a little bit, albeit with talent enough to get by.

The film is introduced as if it itself is a 19th Century Buffalo Bill Show, with resplendent credits to match. It's a nice touch, with florid descriptions of Altman, the film and the performers beginning with "Robert Altman's Absolutely Unique and Heroic Enterprise of Inimitable Lustrel..." and continuing in that manner. In the meantime we hear Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Band perform as they would during shows - and this old-time brass and percussion marching band type of music is what we'll hear throughout the film, especially one "Buffalo Bill" kind of signature tune which can become a little tiresome after the first dozen or so times we hear it. We hear the likes of "Charge" and other trumpet tunes as appropriate - Altman is obviously putting us ringside, and although the film's composer is credited as Richard Baskin (Altman's arranger and organizer on Nashville) we hear much that's familiar, such as the "The Star-Spangled Banner". Sound-wise, you can tell that Altman is still having a great time with multi-track recording systems as far as highlighting specific voices at just the right moment. BAFTA winning sound people such as Chris McLaughlin had been a part of his crew since California Split, when the 8-track system was first used.

Altman's cinematographer was once again Paul Lohmann, whom he had used on California Split and Nashville. The camera work isn't as "showy" as it was when he was using Vilmos Zsigmond on The Long Goodbye or Jean Boffety on Thieves Like Us. Altman seems to be more focused on words and meaning than visual complexity and cinematography as an art, but you'll still notice those zooms, which are frequently used in this film. What is truly rich, and incredibly detailed, is the production design and set decoration. Anthony Masters, production designer and well as set/art decorator for 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which he was Oscar-nominated, has filled the various tents of the Buffalo Bill Show with what looks like thousands of historical artifacts. Art director Jack Maxsted (Oscar winner for his work on Nicholas and Alexandra) has recreated Buffalo Bill's Wild West in magnificent fashion, and set decorator Dennis J. Parrish has created a visually rich and complex world, transporting all the performers back a century with a panache deserving of great respect. This is what makes this Altman film look as great as it does. 3 time Oscar winner Anthony Powell served as costume designer.

This was the first film from Altman since That Cold Day in the Park that critics for the most part didn't gel with, and I wasn't sure myself the first time I watched it - but after reading about Buffalo Bill and the history of the era, then watching it again, I found myself noticing countless details and nuances of performance which increased my viewing pleasure. There's a lot more packed into Buffalo Bill and the Indians than meets the eye the first time around, and Paul Newman really delivers, giving us a Bill Cody that verges on the ridiculous, but stays well within the borders of real world authenticity - he's a man who must keep up a pretense of being 'great' despite the fact he's as ordinary as you or me. In fact, Cody carries with him a great fear of being found out and exposed as being ordinary, and it's this fear which guides his actions and words. When confronted with Sitting Bull - a truly dignified great man of history, Cody flails, fluffs his lines, and makes embarrassing mistakes. The way this unfolds in this film is really interesting, and I immensely enjoyed watching Newman project this character's torment throughout.

I guess I would say that this is Altman's most difficult film up to this point in his career - it expects a lot more from the audience than his previous ones, and those who don't vociferously agree with his stance on American history might feel the focus stays too intently on it's targets for the film's entirety. Much like latter-day films such as The Death of Stalin however, it allows a comic approach to introduce simple and painful truths to stand naked without the usual comforting adornments. The taming of the "Wild West" was a murderous, heinous part of America's history - one that included genocide, and unspeakable cruelty. Those who were adorned as heroes of this age were often not what they were portrayed to be - their feats were complete invention by authors, which graced newspapers, magazines and novels. When Native Americans fought back, they were branded as savages, murderers, bloodthirsty maniacs - justifying what was being done to them. They were in a no-win situation. Buffalo Bill's Wild West was a theatrical representation of all these lies, and Bill Cody, an invention himself, the main attraction.

I think Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson is another film that deserves another chance once we catch up to the filmmakers sensibilities, and adapt ourselves to his unique methods. The film is rich in history, and every scene is meticulously constructed with period details. It's another Altman film which richly rewards multiple viewings with something new to be discovered each time. It doesn't immediately strike you, and it takes time to acclimatize to it's unerring, never deviating focus - but if you really look deeply into this film's soul you just might fall in love with it. On it's surface level, it's as straightforward as one of Bill Cody's shows, and we all know what Altman is saying - but the film isn't trying to convince us, but rather to make us experience the fakeness and futility ourselves, and convince us of how important it is to acknowledge that our perception of historical figures and history itself is no more real than the image on that screen. That our nostalgia is for times and places that never existed in the first place, and as a result is baseless. To not base our history on what entertainers have to tell us, no matter how beguiling it might be.

4

PHOENIX74

04-20-23, 04:00 AM

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3 Women - 1977

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Robert Altman & Patricia Resnick

Starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert Fortier
Ruth Nelson & John Cromwell

Robert Altman's subconscious was again hard at work when he made 3 Women, to me one of his greatest ever films, and one that you can dive into, digging down deep when looking for meaning and substance. Once again we see the director's fondness for Ingmar Bergman, with this film resembling Persona even more than Images did - a film that Altman originally claimed Persona was an inspiration for. In all actuality, 3 Women was based on a dream Altman had, which he expanded into a treatment which was co-authored by Altman's personal friend Patricia Resnick, whom he'd met at the University of Southern California - marking her first screenwriting effort. The particulars of the story were kept blank however, with the actors encouraged to take their roles wherever they felt they should go. Once again Robert Altman would forge ahead by both encouraging his crew to contribute ideas and direction to a film, and letting it grow organically. I find that this method of filmmaking uncovers a great deal about what's going on in our subconscious - and indeed this is a 'dreamlike' film, despite being based fairly well on solid reality. The more you think about this film, the more you see in it.

The film starts at a health spa where the young and child-like Pinky (Sissy Spacek) gets taught the ins and outs by the confident yet unpopular Millie (Shelley Duvall). Pinky latches on to Millie, and when she notices her post a notice for a roommate, she's quick to answer and move in with her. Pinky becomes part of Millie's life, and as such Millie introduces her to artist Willie (Janice Rule) who paints massive murals and creates works of art that she punctures with firearms. She also meets Willie's husband Edgar (Robert Fortier), who has fathered the child Willie is shortly about to give birth to. The two women clash - Pinky is accident-prone and less sure of herself than Millie is, and when Millie brings Edgar home with her one night an argument ensues which leaves Pinky hurt by Millie's harsh words. She attempts suicide by diving off a railing into the pool - leaving Millie feeling guilty and grief-stricken. While Pinky is in a coma, Millie contacts her parents and brings them to see her, but Pinky wakes up and claims the two older people aren't actually her parents. In fact, Pinky's personality has dramatically changed - she's become Millie, but a tragedy is about to unfold that will draw Pinky, Millie and Willie so close together that we start to wonder if perhaps they're all the same person.

Perhaps they are the same person. We learn during the film that Pinky's real name is Mildred, which also happens to be Millie's name, and when you consider that Willie is so close to Millie that you just need to transpose one of her name's letters it starts to seem as if they all share a single name. Pinky does things such as enter Millie's social security number as her own, and keeps on accidentally using Millie's time-card to end her shift at work. When Pinky gets out of the hospital, she starts writing in Millie's diary, claiming that it's hers - and seems to think the apartment they live in is hers instead of Millie's. Also consider the fact that Edgar sleeps with all three women as if they're interchangeable. The three aren't necessarily physically one person, but within the context of the film Altman seems to be specifically equating them as consisting of the same psyche or energy. It's also interesting to note that Spacek seems to personify childhood, while Duvall's character appears to take the form of adolescence and Rule's adult woman or motherhood - three different parts of a woman's lifespan.

3 Women opened at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, and Shelley Duvall ended up winning Best Actress for her performance. Italian film Padre Padrone ended up beating it for the Palme d'Or. Duvall also won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for her work in the film, and was nominated for a New York Film Critics Circle Award - she lost out to her costar Sissy Spacek, who took out the award for her acting in this film. They were both nominated for a National Society of Film Critics Award, and Duvall was nominated for a BAFTA. The pair obviously were real standouts in this film, and make 3 Women what it is - they appear to be living their roles, and bring to the screen two very unique characters who are extremely interesting and fun to watch. Spacek appears more child-like than I've ever seen a grown woman act, and it's incredible how Duvall maintains her confident and easy state of mind amidst the total rejection from those around her - and in spite of her need for attention and approval. When they're not ignoring her they're belittling her in hushed tones that she nevertheless can hear. Rule's is a more distant, dark and mysterious aura, and she's only very slowly introduced into the world of the more dominant two characters.

Composer Gerald Busby's film career doesn't consist of much, but he composed a haunting, somewhat spaced out and psychedelic score for this film - it wouldn't feel out of place in films such as Polanski's Repulsion or Bergman's Persona, as there's something psychologically broken about it. If I had to invent a term for it, it would be "kaleidoscopic brass", and it turns the everyday into something a little unsettling and unreal. In the meantime Altman was working with a new cinematographer again, with Charles Rosher Jr. taking up Director of Photography duties. He quickly adapts to the director's need for movement, both lateral and by zooming in and out, sometimes at speed to draw our attention to something suddenly. He captures Shelley Duvall at one point completely fractured by a reflection, and does a lot more than what Paul Lohmann was doing in Altman's last few films. The colours of 3 Women are interesting as well - with their pastel pinks, purples, yellows and blues dreamily dissolving everything into a desert landscape. There's something otherworldly about it - and matches the tone of everything else in this film.

Altman had Dennis M. Hill, who had edited his previous 4 films, do the editing duties on this. Familiar names abound, such as Chris McLaughlin in the sound department, and you can readily assume that this director had a very steady and stable team of people assisting him in making these films. If you were creative, this was the perfect place to be as far as moviemaking specialties is concerned. Artist Bodhi Wind painted the amazing and visually striking murals - unfortunately he was struck by a car while walking one day in 1991 and killed. You look at the lizard creatures in them - usually a group of females dominated by a man - and wonder what they're all about and how they relate to the film. Considering the subject of this film you'd think they have to be connected to everything. Shelley Duvall decorated the interior of her character's apartment all by herself, and even gets a Set Decoration credit for doing that work - it was the kind of film that encouraged the cast to create their own character's inner world.

One last item to look at in considering what the film means are the transitions all of the characters make during their journeys through time. Spacek's Pinky begins in an obviously child-like and innocent fashion, but later becomes contrary, argumentative and sexual - as if she's going from childhood to adolescence. Duvall's Millie goes from being primarily interested in herself and guys to caring for Pinky and providing for her - as if she's going from adolescence to motherhood. Willie seems to be the maternal matriarch of both of these characters, and by the film's conclusion she's wedded to them as if they're one family living together. There seems to be a natural progression that occurs, created by an almost supernatural process, for these three characters - and in the end they turn on their male overseer, who has failed them completely by putting his physical needs above his own wife and child. He doesn't seem necessary to the family unit we end up with by the time the film's conclusion draws the curtain on what we see.

3 Women really feels like one of Altman's "perfect" films - one where everything comes together in just the right way, and you feel a particular satisfaction having seen it. The film is even interesting and entertaining just on it's surface - all of the characters are highly unusual, and you're never quite sure what they'll do next. When Millie finally manages to find Pinky's parents, and she brings them to see Pinky in hospital, they're a couple that seem to be two of the more stable patients from an asylum rather than your average Ma and Pa - and appear far too old to be Pinky's parents in the first place. When she awakens, and cries out claiming that they're not her parents you're not sure whether to believe it or not - neither option would surprise. Then, after Millie puts them up at her place, she happens upon the two elderly visitors making love, which increases the preternatural feel to what's going on. There's a million little touches to the film as well, which all add up, such as Millie's dress always seeming to get caught by her car door - you'll see her drive around with the hem of her dress poking out many times. Something that first occurred as an accident, and then once Altman saw it he decided to make it a character trait.

I thoroughly enjoyed 3 Women the first time I saw it, and by that first moment I had yet to really invest myself in all the possibilities of what it all means, and what it was saying. I felt sad for the outgoing Millie, who is absolutely ignored by every character in the film other than Pinky - her yearning for friends, and the way she'd invent many small lies about how popular she was, and how she had to turn so many men down, really accentuated the sad feeling I had about her. I still wonder about how female viewers perceive the film, it having been created by a man - but 3 Women seems to have been universally accepted and acclaimed, despite it having to sit dormant for three decades without video or DVD distribution until 2004. It might not have made much money - but Altman was at a certain stage of his career where he could take great risks, and make films with limited appeal. Alan Ladd Jr. at 20th Century Fox was greenlighting Robert Altman films on the basis of the budgets he kept them constrained to, and his interesting ideas. His personal relationship with Ladd would tide the filmmaker over for the rest of the decade.

So, I loved it. Roger Ebert also did, and he rated it as his Number 1 film for 1977 - over and above Star Wars. There weren't many people making films with the guidance of sparse treatments, relying on input from actors and crew, and seeing where it takes everybody at the time, and there weren't that many before or since. What's most surprising is how profound the results can be - to achieve what he did, it would have appeared to me that Altman had meticulously planned every single moment of this film - but it would appear that our subconscious mind knows better, and that the cast and crew also have a role in the creation of a film that goes beyond just doing what the director or producers tell them to do. The rest of the mystery (probably a bottomless mystery) awaits for the next time I turn my mind to 3 Women - for like a dream, it has a lot more to say and reveal. Sometimes a person's personality can carry over into another person - and identity can be elusive, changeable and reflective of who we identify with. Sometimes, like with twins (there are a prominent pair in this film) two or more people can be like one. The desert surroundings of Palm Springs have never seemed as haunting or isolating as they are in this dream - a Robert Altman dream that has now been shared by 3 ethereal women.

5

PHOENIX74

08-19-23, 01:22 AM

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A Wedding - 1978

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by John Considine, Allan F. Nicholls, Patricia Resnick & Robert Altman

Starring Desi Arnaz Jr., Carol Burnett, Geraldine Chaplin, Howard Duff, Mia Farrow
Vittorio Gassman, Lillian Gish, Lauren Hutton, Viveca Lindfors, Pat McCormick
Dina Merrill & Nina Van Pallandt

A Wedding is one of Robert Altman's toughest films to fully invest oneself in, not because it doesn't work or doesn't make sense, but simply because it marks one instance when his experimental ambitions went a step too far - there are 48 speaking parts in all, encompassing an incredible range of characters and small plot threads. Moments of comedy work, and are fun, but at times the scattered nature of the proceedings made me feel a sense of displeasure - it feels like a mess during these moments, and there are times while submitting myself to these moments when I find myself wishing he wasn't overlapping dialogue for the first time since I started watching his films. I admit that wedding receptions do feel this way. When two families collide in this fashion, there are many avenues of intrigue and always plenty going on - but while being a fly on the wall reveals many funny moments, it's also a recipe for disorientation. Instead of a great work of art or original comedic treatise on family, class and ceremony, it kind of comes off like a shambolic muddle - or worse, a home movie. That's not to say, though, that there isn't some Altman magic along the way. There's much - it's just that the overall package doesn't sparkle as much.

Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.) weds Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker) in a service conducted by the doddering Bishop Martin (John Cromwell) - who hasn't presided over a wedding for 25 years. Muffin's family consists of her father, trucking industry player Snooks Brenner (Paul Dooley), and mother Tulip Brenner (Carol Burnett) - along with sister Buffy (Mia Farrow). Dino's family is presided over by old matriarch Nettie Sloan (Lillian Gish), who dies at home the morning the couple give their wedding vows - but other than that there's his mob-connected father, Luigi Corelli (Vittorio Gassman) and mother, Regina Sloan Corelli (Nina Van Pallandt). The wedding reception has been organised by a very strict adherent to procedure, Rita Billingsley (Geraldine Chaplin) and other guests include Nettie's doctor, Jules Meecham (Howard Duff), Luigi's friend "William Williamson" (Bert Remsen) and Dino's aunts, Clarice (Virginia Vestoff ) and Toni (Dina Merrill). Unforeseen weather events, drug use, love affairs, illness, overzealous staff, misunderstandings and the usual attendant chaos play havoc during the reception - but since when has a wedding reception ever proceeded without this kind of drama?

It's a relatively well-known story that Altman decided to make A Wedding when an off-the-cuff remark about him filming people's weddings ("What are you filming next?" the journalistic question went, to which Altman replied, in acerbic fashion, "A wedding!" - he happened to be speaking the absolute truth!) gave him pause for thought. According to his style of filmmaking, a wedding reception would be a very interesting way to comingle characters, record dialogue and create drama. In an exploratory fashion he decided to double the number of speaking parts that Nashville consisted of - from 24 to 48 - and move forward with only the loosest of outlines as to what was going to happen. The film definitely has that feel of not heading in any particular direction as you watch it, and instead of following a story you kind of feel out various characters and learn about them. One of the larger subplots consists of Toni's husband Mack Goddard (played by Altman regular Pat McCormick) falling in love with Tulip, and trying to organise some kind of meeting time and place once she reveals that she's receptive to his advances. The other is the revelation that Buffy is pregnant, and that she claims that Dino is the father. Nettie's unfortunate death, and the cover-up of that death so it doesn't mar the reception, also plays a part.

It didn't feel to me that we approach Gosford Park levels of class distinction and comment in A Wedding, although it's often held up as an examination of wealth variance via observed behaviour. The Corelli's live in a large mansion, and the film was shot at Lester Armor House in Lake Bluff, Illinois instead of in a studio. The director of photography was Charles Rosher Jr. who had just made the alluring and amazing 3 Women with Altman. I think he may have been restricted a little by what he could do with so many people and the real-life location, but there are rooms that consist of doors and walls completely covered with mirrors, and a basement bar that has been fitted out like a subterranean cave, and he makes the most of these unusual features (the mirror room must have been a nightmare to shoot.) He manages to make these two Altman films look like they were made by different directors and cinematographers - completely their own kind of film, with this one often severely muted as far as light is concerned during tense family confrontations and dour situations. This film is one dominated by personalities and people, but eccentric little flourishes remain - with even the statues outside the house rendering their impression of the madness going on when we zoom in and fix on their stone stares.

Sound-wise, Altman had taken another step and affixed his performers with their own small microphones so everything they said could be picked up and mixed into the film at the requisite volume - depending on what the filmmaker wanted us to hear. People speak over each other, but for the most part if you miss something it's not going to cloud what is in essence, primarily and purposely, confused mayhem and disorder. Hearing Leonard Cohen's Bird on a Wire being sung by a girl playing an autoharp is actually deeply touching when you think back to what Cohen's music had done for Altman's masterpiece, McCabe & Mrs. Miller. It's all distinctive of this one-of-a-kind artist's unique style and cinematic presence. You immediately recognize it, even when the result is a little rough - and it's always tempting to go back and find the plethora of jokes and moments you simply didn't hear the first time around. Even the most mindful concentration won't let you hear or notice everything - there's too much going on. The most exciting thing you can say about A Wedding is that it always merits further examination.

Familiar names crop up, and although unfortunately Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek couldn't appear due to scheduling conflicts, Bert Remsen makes his 7th appearance in a Robert Altman film in this - he's comedically the sole guest greeted by the receiving line at the reception, as if he's a king ("William Williamson" is clearly not a king - in any reasonable interpretation of respectable society) and gives sly comments to all. Geraldine Chaplin, having appeared in Nashville and Buffalo Bill, was becoming something of a regular. Old family friend Tony Lombardo handled the editing duties once again - although it could be said that the entire cast and crew on an Altman film were his extended family. In the meantime, Altman found himself under the protective wing of Alan Ladd Jnr. at 20th Century Fox and free from many of the demands most of his contemporaries and lesser lights would ordinarily have been feeling. After nearly a decade of critical success, and during the very height of the pre-Heaven's Gate artistic utopia of the 1970s, it made sense that this filmmaker would test his boundaries further and further. A Wedding didn't need to be a stellar success to ensure Altman's next feature would be all he wanted it to be.

To hear Robert Altman talk about A Wedding, you get the impression that he defends all of his babies, this included, but that he also acknowledges that there was too much going on and too many characters having a meaningful impact on what an audience has to follow. If there's clarity, then perhaps you could get away with it, but by definition there's a real-world fuzziness and diffuseness to his films and particularly this one. It's a trademark, and one you can't push to absolute extremes like this. I like much of it, and some of it is as delightful as any of his work done during this period - but there are far too many individual stories that go missing in action - never to reach any (even perfunctory) conclusion or resolution. Even the major one concerning Nettie's death seems to peter out slowly without any satisfying drama or surprise. It doesn't help that in the meantime, films like the original Death at a Funeral made use of similar contrivances with uproarious results, making A Wedding look a little ordinary in comparison.

Amongst all of this, there are absolute gems to be found. Carol Burnett, in one of her first major feature film roles, gives the finest comedic performance of the film - stealing absolutely every minute the camera is near her. You can tell that her powers of improvisation are the sharpest of anyone there - even Altman regulars who are used to finding all of the words by themselves. In the background (I haven't spotted these "before they were famous" faces, but I haven't exactly been looking for them), a young John Malkovich, Gary Sinise and Laurie Metcalf are roaming around as extras. As already stated, there's much to be discovered in repeat viewings with more concerted concentration, because so much is hard to discern the first and second times around - and often a fuller picture makes future viewings all that more satisfying. The names the Brenners have given themselves are also fun - Muffin, Buffy, Snooks and Tulip all do their utmost to make their own monikers sound even more ridiculous in respect to their behaviour and character.

In summing up, Altman finds his outer limit in A Wedding, pushing the envelope a dozen or so characters too far, leaving some of them (and their individual stories) with too little time to breathe and become part of the larger picture. That said, it's full of ingenious little moments and a lot of gratifying comedic improvisations, making it a fun if unfulfilling movie to watch. If you're a fan of the filmmaker then it's a definite recommendation, but with the proviso that you'll feel the rough edges and the limits of where spontaneity in this form can take us. Although obviously farcical, there's an honest and recognizable depiction of the awkward debacle this comingling of families often descends to in real life. The celebratory atmosphere encourages participants to get drunk, take drugs and even act in a promiscuous manner, so the grotesque features of this comedy come from a place that's fairly close to reality. With a good portion that works, and an equal portion that doesn't, A Wedding is one of those films that depends on how receptive you are to it's chaos. It'll be required viewing for Altman fanatics - but everyone else should approach it with caution.

3

PHOENIX74

08-24-23, 08:27 AM

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Quintet - 1979

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Frank Barhydt, Patricia Resnick & Robert Altman

Starring Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey, Bibi Andersson
Brigitte Fossey & Nina Van Pallandt

Film history is overloaded with compellingly fascinating failures, and Quintet sits amongst them as Robert Altman's first ever shocker - a visually interesting and rare venture into sci-fi territory for him, which at times feels a little dull and leaden - sure to have an average moviegoer shifting in their seat a little. It can be something of a challenge for anyone expecting science-fiction action and drama - stretching out into 118 minutes of a dark, depressing cinematic void. Interpretive meaning should be a little more satisfying than it is in Quintet. The game of life is one in which you feel most alive when close to death, but the thrill inherent in defying your own mortality meets a sad kind of irony here, because this is an extraordinarily boring movie. Visually though, it's much more interesting, and although Tom Pierson's score can be quite overbearing, it beats the sluggish pace and empty tone we're otherwise faced with. Somewhat sadly, Kenner Toys actually designed a board game to be released as a tie-in, but the film's dismal box office death means it went unreleased, and is an extremely rare collector's piece.

A new ice age has descended upon a doomed mankind, freezing the windswept landscape and heralding a new cold planetary era. Survivor Essex (Paul Newman), a seal hunter and young Vivia (Brigitte Fossey), miraculously pregnant, travel north to a city which once housed millions - there, a few cling on tenaciously. Essex looks up his brother, Francha (Thomas Hill) at an abandoned directory and much to his surprise finds he's still living at the same place. Those also sheltering at the abode all join together to play the game of Quintet - which consists of dice, and a patterned five-sided table top, whereupon players "kill" each other and are eliminated. The game's popularity is all-consuming. Essex goes out to search for firewood, and while he's away a stranger, Redstone (Craig Richard Nelson), sneaks a bomb into the building and kills everyone inside. Essex tracks the man down, but before the two confront each other, Redstone is killed. The only evidence as to what Redstone was after is a list of names he had on him, which leads to a Quintet tournament. There, Saint Christopher (Vittorio Gassman), Grigor (Fernando Rey), Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson), Deuca (Nina Van Pallandt) and Goldstar (David Langton) await to play a deadly iteration of the game.

Before saying anything else about this film I have to get one thing out - the central idea embedded in Quintet, of a post-apocalyptic world where survivors are obsessed with this board game, is monumentally stupid. Quintet looks like any one of a hundred uninteresting board games you'd be forced to play for an hour with your aunts and uncles at a family gathering during the holidays. The notion that people, struggling to survive the end of humanity, are fixated on playing it puts me at odds with the movie. Just imagine World War III breaks out, and what remains of humanity becomes inexplicably consumed with playing Ludo all day - to the point where our daily lives revolve around it. The characters in Quintet can barely stand to talk about anything other than this silly game, as if playing it is so addictive people can barely be bothered to eat and keep warm. It makes no sense. Essex is the only character that seems nonplussed by this, inquiring about work, gathering firewood and trying to keep the human race going via raising children. People do nothing but talk about Quintet, and it bugs me because the game is obviously not all that interesting. When your film is the slowest of slow burns, it helps to not alienate your audience with inane fancies that don't stand even brief examination.

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Fancy a game of Quintet?

Not everything about Quintet is awful however. The cinematography is sublime, and so good that it feels wasted on this hardly seen film. Jean Boffety, who had done absolutely marvelous and beautiful work with Altman on Thieves Like Us, returned to collaborate with the filmmaker again, and he brought an almost supernatural ability to know where to shoot from and what he wanted on each shot. The film was shot in the ruins of the Expo 67 World Fair in Montreal, with broken down pavilions and wreckage providing some great real life sets for the cast and crew. Boffety uses the zoom technique Altman was so fond of a lot, and in a daring move clouded the outer edges of the lens (it was smeared with some substance), making only a central circle visible to us. This gives us the impression looking through an ice-clouded, frozen pane of glass. The whites are dazzling, as are the whites on whites and general mix of long shots, very long shots and intimate closer ones. I loved just looking at Quintet, and blanking the story and characters from my mind. A real winter wonderland with various structures, levels, packs of dogs and huddled survivors clad in apocalyptic medieval winter gear. The lighting is always perfect, and the shot always interesting. There's near constant panning and the camera always seems to be roaming and searching. A very interesting film visually.

I found Tom Pierson's score a little much at times. Although fitting for a science fiction film, at times it would call attention to itself by being bombastic with it's harsh high pitched and loud moments, trumpets and drums pounding. At other times it seemed suited to a disaster film. The music powers the feel of the entire film, transporting us to some part of an alternate reality with it's unusual shrill whistles and sharp tones, climaxing during hunts, murders or the discovery of dead bodies - of which there are quite a few, contributing to the film being classified with an 18+ Censorship Rating. Throats are cut, and people are full-on stabbed in the head in this film - the latter stages of which almost cross over into slasher territory. All the while a roaming pack of fat Rottweilers feed on the various dead bodies littering the environment. Those dogs are unpleasant - they are basically substitutes for vultures, and during one moving scene Essex saves a loved one from the indignity of being eaten by the marauding pack. A scene that would be more moving if Newman had of been directed to exhibit a little more emotion. Listening to Pierson's music for Quintet by itself would be an interesting exercise, it's atmospheric and almost discordant tones and shrieks displaced from the cold apocalypse.

The cast is no less unusual or different, stacked as it is with European actors and actresses. French actress Brigitte Fossey had grown since Forbidden Games and The Happy Road. Bibi Andersson is a fascinating inclusion when you take account of Altman's love for the cinema of Ingmar Bergman. Nina van Pallandt, a Danish actress, had just appeared in Altman's A Wedding, and Indian born Thomas Hill had been in McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Famed Italian star Vittorio Gassman had also popped up in A Wedding. Spaniard Fernando Rey, a favourite of Luis Buñuel, fits in as much as any other performer in this eclectic mix. Upstairs, Downstairs stalwart, David Langton, was flying the flag for Britain. In a disorientating sense, all of these actors playing characters with wildly differing accents espousing the tactics and merit of Quintet isn't pleasurable, and does nothing to sooth that feeling that we have a lack of interest in what we're seeing. There's no grand performance here - and even Paul Newman seems distant and disinterested. I liked Buffalo Bill and the Indians, and Newman must have enjoyed the collaboration in that venture, but not here. He's on autopilot.

"Being alive. That's the only prize." The players in Quintet play for the thrill of it, which is so ironic considering how dull the film is, and how ordinary the game is. They'd be better served looking for food, and especially having sex. Essex gets drawn into the violence and murder, thinking victory will lead to some kind of epiphany or prize - and us as the audience go through the same process of hope and disappointment. Yes, watching Quintet inevitably leads to a feeling of anticlimax, and although sticking around to really get a good feel of it has lead to some appreciation of the artistry involved (the ever-trusty Leon Ericksen, who had been with Altman since 1969 film That Cold Day in the Park, was once again a production designer on Quintet), it's a dud overall. Mention must be made though, about the Medieval-type costumes in this film (Altman would stick with costume designer Scott Bushnell from Nashville in '75 to Short Cuts in '93) which are also extremely well made. Aside from those aspects however, Quintet is so ill-suited for viewing by the average moviegoer that you'd have to consider it an all-out failure, even when considering it's positive aspects. Dull in story, with confused and unenthusiastic performances and a silly central premise, I'd advise even those interested to approach with caution. I give points for it's look and sound only. Altman rolled the dice, and crapped out this time.

2.5

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Perhaps Monopoly instead...

PHOENIX74

08-30-23, 04:35 AM

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A Perfect Couple - 1979

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Allan F. Nicholls & Robert Altman

Starring Paul Dooley, Marta Heflin, Titos Vandis & Belita Moreno

You know you're going to get something unusual from a Robert Altman movie, so it comes as no surprise to hear that A Perfect Couple is a very curious and out of the ordinary romantic comedy - veering towards being a musical, though most of the music numbers are of the diegetic kind. Altman's idea for the film was to show us a love story where the two leads were just two ordinary people ("schlumps" is the word he uses) and for this he nabbed Paul Dooley (who played one of the main characters in A Wedding) and Marta Heflin (who'd also been in A Wedding) as his two leads. The movie plays so unconventionally that I genuinely didn't know what was in store for us - it's a playfully enigmatic romance. Sheila (Heflin) and Alex (Dooley) have a courting that's so off the rails the film earns top marks for being original - and while that's what most of us want when we watch a movie, I'd say be careful what you wish for. Your taste in music and amenability to the flawed personalities of our two main characters might be what makes or breaks A Perfect Couple for you.

Paul and Sheila both subscribe to a dating service, hooking up by watching taped Q&A sessions with prospective partners. Their first date is an absolute disaster, and that's not the only factor which will work against them. Paul's Greek family is ruled by it's patriarch, his father Panos (Titos Vandis) who is unusually strict and traditional - so much so Paul hides the fact he's dating Sheila. His sister, Eleousa (Belita Moreno), is dying. Paul and Eleousa are desperate to escape the overbearing and stifling atmosphere at home, whereas brother-in-law Fred Bott (Henry Gibson) is all too ready to play along. Meanwhile, Sheila deals with a strict patriarch of her own - band-leader Teddy (Ted Neeley), who drives his singers and musicians hard in rehearsals performance-wise and other than that fines them for even small infractions. She lives in a loft with all the other band-members, sacrificing much privacy, and experiencing the same kind of lack of control over her life. Paul and Sheila's love life will go on to experience one disaster after another - but something keeps on pulling them back to each other, and they do have the advantage of having both seen each other at their worst. Perhaps that's love, and a perfect couple.

I say love, but the first time I watched A Perfect Couple I thought Sheila hated Paul - and watching Paul's pushy insistence he see Sheila off at her door and kiss her made me very uncomfortable. Multiple times she tries to fend him off, and get him to leave - and by the end I was telling him aloud "Dude, she said no!" It was this that confused me a great deal about the film. Sheila is simply shy and reserved, but this can easily be misinterpreted as not being interested - making Paul's pushy insistence on kissing and demanding they go on more dates look like he's unaware that Sheila's not that into him. Only when she opens up a little later in the film do we understand her feelings in the matter, and as a result the film becomes less prickly. I honestly thought we were heading into stalker territory - especially when, after a mix-up, Sheila starts dating someone else and it's Paul who arrives unannounced, fighting the other guy regardless of what Sheila has to say about the matter. My feelings about all of this might stem from the fact that Paul isn't your typical heart-throb figure, and that perhaps in any other romantic comedy I've ever seen, he probably wouldn't be winning the girl over in such a clumsy manner.

One other aspect of the movie that might tip it into unfavourable territory is the music. Keepin' 'Em Off The Streets had been assembled by Allan F. Nicholls not too long before production on this film commenced, and they get to perform quite a few numbers during the film - around a dozen in all. I liked a few of the songs, but there were some that didn't quite come off as well. It doesn't kill the film, but seeing as the back-half is so music-heavy a couple of mediocre songs strung back to back really kills the mood. Hearing Jesus Christ Superstar's Ted Neeley belt out a few numbers was cool though - I'd only ever heard him as Jesus in that film, and I really enjoy him playing the lead role in that movie rendition of the musical. Marta Heflin does a great job singing Won't Somebody Care as well, seeing as we don't hear her as a vocalist as much as the other band members. In my opinion, I thought there were probably 3 or so songs too many that bog the film down - some of the weaker numbers that insist on dragging the last 20 or so minutes out as long as they do. I'd enjoyed the music up to a point, but it overstays it's welcome.

Out of all the reviews I read for A Perfect Couple, the most interesting item of observation was from Penelope Gilliatt of The New Yorker, who talked about Altman "working too fast", and although her comments about this not being a "closely thought-out film" (such a comment seems to show a lack of awareness about Altman films in general) is both on the money but at the same time (in a contradictory sense) an understandable misinterpretation, I also get the feeling that he was rushing through. He had a novice cinematographer in Edmond L. Koons, who wouldn't last long in the business, and his old friend and long-time collaborator Tony Lombardo in the editing suite - but this isn't a film that puts much stock in technical qualifications. Instead, Altman wants to explore the spontaneous thoughts of his actors in an almost rough, documentary style of filmmaking. He'll send some characters to interrupt Paul and Sheila, who are about to make love, but it distinctly sounds like the reasons they have for interrupting have been made up on the fly, and as is usual in many of his films, dialogue is probably left to them completely - in other words, it hasn't been written down at all.

In the end, what it all amounts to is one of Robert Altman's least seen films. It doesn't demand to be seen as a great work of art, but it does stand as another interesting experiment by a filmmaker who was totally unafraid of trying something completely different. Of course, in many previous instances his experimentation proved pure genius, and his experiments masterpieces. It wasn't until this late 70s portion of his career that his experiments sometimes seemed a little lacking in execution and foresight. I can't count the number of times I've been watching a cinematic romance thinking, "Why can't they just get two average people? I'd really be able to believe in a film that did that." Now I'm faced with the ultimate truth of what that really feels like. A small portion of me is shame-facedly leaning over to the person casting this and whispering carefully "Can we still get Brad Pitt?" I'm exaggerating of course - in a way that tries to explain how conflicted I felt while watching a guy with average looks and awkward, deficient personality stumble through a disaster-ridden courtship. Marta Heflin is good looking, and there have been no end of shy girls in romantic dramas or comedies, so the same doesn't go for her in this.

Spread throughout, there are an inestimable number of little Altman jokes - often dependent on the improvisatory skills of the performers. Henry Gibson and Allan F. Nicholls, two Altman regulars, do the best with what they're given. Moments of fun and comedy aren't telegraphed like they'd be in a big high-budget Hollywood comedy - so it takes great concentration to get the most out of A Perfect Couple. Often it's the throwaway remark, the pratfall in the background or the slight change of expression - and the good thing about this is that when one of these comedic moments doesn't land, it's not particularly obvious it was even there. Marta Heflin is the enigma - she didn't go on to have a big career - hardly one at all actually. Paul Dooley flirts with making his character unsympathetic - and it's only once you can see the film as a whole you see he's a likable guy. There's no great performer here that that really demands attention, or any performance that's cinematically satisfying - so your enjoyment depends on how you grade the experiment. If you like the music of Keepin' 'Em Off The Streets (their music dominated the latter half of the film), Altman's sense of humour and Dooley, chances are you'll find this eccentric and enjoyable. If you can't stand the chaos, the music is hurting your ears and you find Dooley annoying, chances are you'll dislike this very much. I landed somewhere in the middle. A Perfect Couple is a long, long way from being a perfect movie, but it's a daring one at least.

3

PHOENIX74

10-22-23, 05:30 AM

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HealtH- 1980

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Frank Barhydt, Robert Altman & Paul Dooley

Starring Carol Burnett, Glenda Jackson, James Garner, Lauren Bacall
Paul Dooley & Alfre Woodard

By the time the 1970s wound down and the new decade loomed, filmmaker Robert Altman had worked himself into an unenviable position - his champion at 20th Century Fox, Alan Ladd Jr., quit his position as president of the studio mid-'79, leaving him without someone he could count on to indulge him. For years he'd been free to experiment, regardless of declining audience numbers and critical acclaim. He'd made a few great films since Nashville, in 1975, but nothing that had the same kind of industry buzz and popular appeal as MASH (1970), and only one, 3 Women (1977), could be classified as being among his best. Despite all of that, for his next, he made his most Altmanesque film since that mid-70s classic in HealtH - just too late. 20th Century Fox were not interested anymore, and the film was given the smallest of Arthouse releases - and only an exalted few got to see it. In the years since, licensing issues meant it's never seen the light of day in VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray form - easily classifying itself as hardly seen. Going through Altman's lesser-seen canon, one always hopes to find unfortunate classics, but doesn't always expect to - fortunately, HealtH is one of those that's actually quite good - bordering on great.

The film takes place during a convention at the Don CeSar Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida. It's a health food convention, and the organization (called HealtH, which stand for "Happiness, Energy, and Longevity through Health") is host to three nominees running campaigns for the upcoming election of it's president. Esther Brill (Lauren Bacall) - a woman who claims to be an 83-year-old virgin, and who suffers from dreadful attacks of narcolepsy at the worst possible times (you know she's fallen asleep when her right arm raises itself.) Her slogan is "Feel Yourself". Isabella Garnell (Glenda Jackson) - a self-obsessed, pretentious lady whose speeches are borrowed wholesale from Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. She has most of what she says recorded on tape. The third-party candidate is Dr. Gil Gainey (Paul Dooley) - salesperson for "Vita-Sea" (a powdered kelp product) who constantly pretends to have drowned to draw attention. The cast of characters also includes White House representative Gloria Burbank (Carol Burnett) and Esther Brill's campaign manager, Harry Wolff (James Garner) - who also happens to be Gloria's ex-husband.

Critics of the film complain that it lampoons the American political scene too directly, and lacks subtlety - but this is exactly why I enjoyed HealtH so much. It's naked lampooning and the way it obviously has everyone stand in for something that's easily observable in 1970s politics gives the film a broad kind of power, and keeps it from being too pretentious. Altman isn't trying to make incisive points, but is instead harnessing the ridiculous and using it to power his distinct brand of comedy and moviemaking. Most of all - for the first time in a while for Altman - the whole cast look like they're having the time of their lives. James Garner would go on to often state that he had a great time on location at the Don CeSar, and Carol Burnett looks to be hitting a manic groove as a lady who becomes sexually aroused by being scared. The silly ways Harry does nothing to sooth her when she comes to him with conspiratorial fright, or the way she holds him when she thinks she's seen a dead body are priceless. I loved the energy they had - and because Altman has taken a step back from his '48-character' experimentation in films like A Wedding, we get to enjoy it all the more.

Henry Gibson appears in his 4th Altman film here, as dirty trickster Bobby Hammer - you can see how everyone lived under the apprehension of Nixon politics becoming the norm during this period. Paul Dooley's relationship with the director had advanced to him being a cowriter on HealtH - this was his 3rd Altman film. Allan F. Nicholls - who'd go on to co-direct with Altman on 2nd unit duties in the 80s and 90s is appearing in a small role - his 5th. The performers ad-lib in a convivial atmosphere, and here things really work - there's a certain magic in the air that wasn't quite as conducive in A Wedding or A Perfect Couple. The situation is weird enough to bring out odd responses, and Alfre Woodard, close to the beginning of her career, gives a wonderfully hesitant yet drawn out answer to an interviewer's question on just how strange this particular convention is. That's among many moments that I really liked, and this is another of those Altman movies that have too much packed in to take in on a first viewing - I'll be coming back to explore this film numerous times I feel. Of course everyone talks over everyone else - we'd expect no less.

The film had me when I noticed one political candidate was taping everything she said - it's such a bare-faced presidential/Nixon trait, and I became aware that nothing was being slid under the table to me here. It was straight forward and up-front - and I wonder if the director thought he might have a more accessible movie on his hands for the first time in a while - which would be especially ironic, considering the fact that hardly anyone had the chance to see it anyway. I loved Gil Gainey and his urge for us to go with neither the extreme left nor extreme right in the election (one in which he knows he has no hope of winning, but kicking up a stink regardless) - instead, he wants us to vote for him, the "Extreme Middle". Also, another piece of wisdom from a candidate that sure feels true - "When you're that crazy, everybody believes you." Indeed - who would make something like that up? They must be telling the truth. I think a lot came to the cast in the moment, with politics being an especially easy inspiration for tomfoolery. It always has been.

So, where did this film end up? After being replaced at the last minute with 20th Century Fox's Oh, Heavenly Dog (says a lot about the industry, that a Chevy Chase stinker would replace a good Altman film) and only existing for a couple of arthouse showings after poor test screenings, Altman himself re-released it in April 1982. Ronald Reagan watched it the same year, at Camp David, and called it "the world's worst movie" (I'm sure he loved Oh, Heavenly Dog - it would figure.) It wasn't deserving of any of that - and although it teeters on cult status just because of it's tortured existence these last 40-plus years, it's yet to have it's day. It simply hasn't been released properly in any form. It's no masterpiece, but it's one of Altman's good movies - and the most fun since Nashville in '75 (a film it's often compared to, and along with it's political commentary it does bear a striking resemblance to this classic.) I finally fell in love with Carol Burnett here as a performer and person - she's terrific, and so energetic. Lauren Bacall is wonderfully infuriating. James Garner is purely a sex object. Dick Cavett appears as himself, covering the convention, and watching his rival Johnny Carson's every move on television each night.

Set against bright pastel colours in sunny Florida, on location at the Don CeSar, Altman also collaborated with Frank Barhydt on the screenplay (they'd done Quintet together, and would go on to collaborate on Short Cuts and Kansas City.) There's nothing overly special about the cinematography or music in it - although "The Steinettes", Altman's a cappella doo-wop street quartet, get to sing a lot of songs and otherwise brighten the mood. They'd reappear in Popeye. It all positively adds to the movie, and is another reason to look on it as undeserving of it's underseen status. I have to admit - after watching Quintet and A Perfect Couple, I was not expecting much from HealtH. Lowered expectations help a person enjoy a film, but this was an absolute return to form for Robert Altman and a film that feels like it puts forward the best of what he could offer comedy-wise as it gives to us his own personal brand of political satire. It's not for everyone (especially people not familiar with his work) - and I can understand why test screenings would go badly - but for those with that acquired taste, I'm sure it would poll much better and be voted for favourably amongst fans. That is, as long as they can find it to actually have a chance of seeing it.

4

PHOENIX74

12-15-23, 02:28 AM

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Popeye - 1980

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Jules Feiffer
Based on the comic strip by E. C. Segar

Starring Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall, Paul L. Smith, Paul Dooley, Ray Walston & Richard Libertini

Are we only just now able to appreciate Robert Altman's Popeye? Did it confound us at the time of it's release? Nothing up on that screen is comparable to any other such film, and off-screen it's equally hard to find examples to judge it's production against. The idea alone is remarkable and hard to process mentally - the director of films such as Images, Nashville and 3 Women, an anti-establishment, arthouse/experimental filmmaker taking on a big budget, property-based, live-action comic strip musical. Altman's previous films defied convention, and in some cases had paid dearly for doing so. Now he was to direct what was anticipated as one of the biggest films of the year for Paramount - a position he had never been in before. The result of this strange marriage was indeed remarkable, but tagged a "fiasco", "failure" and "bomb" - despite being none of those things. Popeye was one of the biggest moneymakers Paramount had for the year it was released, and has critics looking at it today and seeing something that wasn't seen back then - an extraordinary filmmaking achievement. A wonderful film.

The production had as it's ground zero a weird shanty town constructed from scratch on the island of Malta. It's been a tourist attraction to this day - given the moniker "Popeye Village". This location, purposely grey to let the 'cartoon characters' stand out as if this were a live-action comic strip (it has since been spruced up to flower-garden standard), really gives the film a firm grounding and sense of reality. "Sweethaven" - it's characters sing what amounts to a 'national anthem' at the start of the film which familiarizes us to a town which feels not only like a country unto itself, but almost a reality disconnected from any outside contact. That would explain why Popeye (Robin Williams) is ogled uncertainly by all of the other characters when he arrives as the 'stranger'. In it roam all of the familiar characters from the comic strip and cartoon. Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall) and Bluto (Paul L. Smith) are the standouts, but we also get the likes of Wimpy (Paul Dooley), Castor Oyl (Donovan Scott), Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston) and George W. Geezil (Richard Libertini).

Popeye rows in from the sea to Sweethaven on a quest to find his long lost father, who abandoned him at the age of two. On arrival in the crooked shanty town he takes up residence in the Oyl household, with Castor, Nana (Roberta Maxwell), Cole (MacIntyre Dixon) and of course the clumsy Olive, who is betrothed to Bluto. Bluto controls Sweethaven while the Commodore is seemingly away, and does so with an iron fist - declaring curfews along with often losing his temper and destroying things. On the eve of her wedding a celebration is held, but Olive, who has been engaged a number of times before, sneaks away, coming to the realisation that Bluto isn't for her - and she runs into Popeye, who is having trouble fitting in. The two share a dizzy kind of chemistry. Both come across an abandoned baby in a basket and, naming him Swee'Pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt), decide to raise him together. Eventually Popeye challenges Bluto's rule of Sweethaven by various means - including a boxing match, uncovering Swee'Pea's talents of foretelling the future and the discovery of what has actually happened to the Commodore.

It's not a narrative that neatly unfolds or tells a compelling story (something of the western "a stranger rides into town" theme) - but this is Popeye, and the comic strip nature of that fact was something producer Robert Evans, screenwriter Jules Feiffer and Robert Altman himself wanted to preserve. As soon as the film begins you'll notice a marked difference between this and most films of it's ilk - most apparent the way dialogue is kind of quietly muttered and mumbled, as if what's being said is background to more important matters. There are some funny asides that Robin Williams comes out with that are barely audible (Williams had to redub his audio because talking with a pipe in his mouth made his recorded lines on set not clear enough - and yet it's still hardly clear in any event.) Then the first musical number is a strange amalgam of regular dialogue and semi-apparent tune, centered on Popeye's occasional "Blow me down!" as he comes across many a curiosity in Sweethaven. It's almost as if Altman is slowly acclimating us to what's to come. During all of this we meet various strange inhabitants in the foreground and background - and it surely is a magical comic strip come to life.

Popeye's music, musical numbers and general dialogue is in general clear enough - but Altman doesn't let go of his penchant for playing with how audible it is, and what that dialogue is competing with for our attention. Jules Feiffer was beside himself after a preview screening when he realised that much of it couldn't be clearly discerned - something Altman attended to when other patrons complained about not being able to hear it. Although much clearer now, it's still an interestingly novel way to present a comic strip musical movie - full of curious routines and strange songs written by Harry Nilsson. It gives the mind little basis for comparison, because there's not much out there that is like this. Altman added professional clowns and circus performers to the cast, giving us wild real-life cartoon characters performing unusual stunts and really embodying their respective characters. Most noticeable is former clown Bill Irwin, making his debut here as Ham Gravy. He contorts his body and does such wonderful work he needs no dialogue at all.

The production design (Wolf Kroeger) is remarkable, the set decoration (Oscar-winner Jack Stephens) is remarkable and the costume design (Scott Bushnell) is lovingly true to Popeye's origins and history. The Sweethaven set is simply incredible, and one of the best of it's sort I've ever seen. The cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno (just coming off an Oscar win for All That Jazz) is emblematic of a Robert Altman film - still full of those zooms and inventive Altmanesque shots. The actors really embrace the whole feel of this "live comic strip" cinematic exercise - Shelley Duvall was, as Altman said, born to play Olive Oyl, and Robin Williams is also giving 100%. For Duvall, this was her 7th time around with this director, and including The Shining, which had come out earlier that same year, she'd only been in two feature films not directed by him. Regulars Paul Dooley (4th Altman film) and Allan F. Nicholls (6th Altman film) as Rough House continued his penchant for sticking with certain actors.

So overall, speaking generally, my thoughts and feelings have also changed over time regarding Popeye, and I think the film gains a lot when you're more of a film lover. If you're a kid, and just want to be entertained, Popeye is on shakier ground - although that's not to say many kids wouldn't love it. It's not as vivacious, simple or loud as some kid's films are - and depends on careful consideration of details that may be missed by a younger audience. It's almost too good for it's own good. But while some of the effects - such as when Donovan Scott's Castor Oyl is kicked out of a boxing ring, flying through the air as if launched by a cannon - are marvelous, there are the occasional low points. Take for example a giant octopus near the end that behaves more like the one in Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster than anything you'd expect from a film such as this. I'm not complaining though - overall, this is a beautiful and well realised film. I've seen it as middling for a long time - but giving it more careful consideration, I've come to love it. It's so rich in detail, and naturally comedic, that it's grown on me.

For quite a while, I've been seeing Popeye as a kind of dividing line for Altman. A cut-off point, after which his stature diminished for just over a decade until he reemerged with The Player in 1992. If that's true, then it's not because of the quality of this film, or how well it did at the box office - it was simply because the heads of production and studio bosses in Hollywood hated the man, and actually played down Popeye's success, just so they could be rid of him. It may not be universally beloved, but it's a filmmaking achievement and seems to be admired by many critics who approach it today - as if film lovers in general weren't ready for that kind of movie back in 1980. I was actually surprised by my recent reaction to it - and my desire to watch it again so soon after taking it on. It's a rare example of a living breathing comic strip, and one transposed so faithfully from the page to the screen. That talented group, sequestered half the world away in Malta, really gave Popeye their loving best. We should love them all in return. If you haven't seen it for a while, or have never seen it, I suggest giving it a viewing. You might just find a new appreciation for it.

4

crumbsroom

12-15-23, 07:42 AM

crumbsroom

12-16-23, 12:35 PM

Oh, yay, Health is on Youtube now.

KeyserCorleone

12-16-23, 01:31 PM

Some appreciation for Popeye. Yes, some parts are a bit wonky, and it probably doesn't hold together perfectly as narrative cinema, but as unique spectacle, as an example of cinematic individualism, as a mishmash of all sorts of different talent hitting us from all sides, it's borderline brilliant.

I hated it when I saw it in the theater as a kid though. But I also hated Empire Strikes Back, so what the hell did I know?

I admire it for really trying hard to be a live-action cartoon. You can see some great efforts of Altman to think outside the box on that part. Having said that, I didn't find it to be the funniest comedy, despite the good casting.

Wyldesyde19

12-16-23, 01:40 PM

I’ve been vocal about my dislike of Popeye before. It’s one of his few actual failures, in my eyes. Up there with Kansas City and Buffalo Bill. That I have seen so far, anyways.

PHOENIX74

12-17-23, 04:34 AM

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Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean - 1982

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by Ed Graczyk
Based on his play

Starring Sandy Dennis, Cher, Karen Black, Sudie Bond, Kathy Bates & Mark Patton

It's hard to write about Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean - it has a delicate beauty to it that makes me more than a little nervous about trampling and stepping on wispy threads of subtext and most importantly purpose. It's the kind of film that I think is better approached by seeing it three or four times over the course of a year or two, stopping to run a thought or two through your mind every so often. It's a straightforward adaptation of a play, and I'm using 'adaptation' loosely, as it has lost none of the narrative or verbal trademarks of something you'd see live at a theater - with only Robert Altman's fluid visual direction brought to life by cinematographer Pierre Mignot adding a dimension you'd definitely miss out on if you were seeing it as a play. It all takes place in the one five-and-dime store in McCarthy, Texas and deals with a James Dean fan club who meets on the day of Dean's death, and then 20 years later for a reunion. The two time periods are mixed together, and the device that separates one time period from the other is a counter-length mirror in the store.

The store is run by Juanita (Sudie Bond) - an older matriarch, God-fearing and worn compared to the fan club women who are barely past their teens during the 1955 time period of the story. They are, of course, much older in 1975 when some come back for the reunion. There's the nervous and high-strung Mona (Sandy Dennis), sexy Sissy (Cher), quiet and reserved Edna Louise (Marta Heflin), and the much more verbose Stella Mae (Kathy Bates) all coming back and reuniting after having gone off in separate directions to live their lives. With them arrives a stranger, Joanne (Karen Black), who has what at first is an unknown link to the girls. There's some reminiscence about a male character, Joe Qualley (Mark Patton) - a young boy often taunted and beaten by the men in town, and unseen is young James Dean in 1975, whom Mona claims came as a result of a night spent between her and Dean while 1956 film Giant was being filmed - her being an extra in it. We see various flash-backs from the '55 period - all within the mirror of the shop.

I've never gone to a reunion in my life, but I imagine most who go to them try to reflect what's best about each and other's life, and minimize or hide what's bad. Ed Graczyk is using this as a kind of example to reflect on a larger scale the way we all build facades around ourselves and try to project a not entirely honest image of ourselves to others in our lives. Our failures go unmentioned, our sadness kept quiet and any negative change to our physical features hidden. In it's most visible way, this is observed when men wear wigs to hide their baldness, and people use make-up to try and normalize their physical features. We walk around and interact with people while carrying a sign with us saying "Everything is fine." We're not getting older, we're not desperately sad, we're not worried about the future, and we've never experienced anything that has left a never-healing open wound on our psyche. The reality of "today" really contrasts with the earlier epoch in the film - James Dean is alive and virile, things are happening, and possibilities seem endless - until clouds appear on the horizon.

The performers from the Broadway version of the Ed Graczyk play came back to feature in this film, and the well-rehearsed first-rate performances are all pretty special. Cher, Karen Black and Sandy Dennis really stick out and are in brilliant form - their emotionally demanding parts are strewn with pitfalls, and it would have been easy to overact considering how raw some of the moments are. Cher was new to something that required a full-bodied realization of a character (she'd be nominated twice for an Oscar during the same decade, winning for her performance in 1987 film Moonstruck, so there was undeniable talent there.) Just incredible performances - and seeing them are big reasons to see the film. The camera moves around them and through the store surprisingly swiftly and never really settles in one space, like a roaming fly about the place. We're always panning and zooming - shifting and tilting, restless and very free all the same. I liked this motion, especially seeing as we're bound to the one small location.

There's a deep abiding sadness - a nostalgic sadness - to this movie. Graczyk was inspired to write it after visiting Marfa, where Giant was filmed. The only remnant remaining from the giant mock-up of the mansion in the film was a propped up façade, in pieces and decaying. It brought back to him the memory of how vibrant things were when James Dean was alive, and this movie was being made. A nostalgic gulf, which always hangs around places that are decaying and disappearing. Mona, taking the place of the author, mentions her visit to the remains of the façade in the story - she collects small pieces to take away and hold onto. It adds an element of loss to the whole feel of the film. A loss of innocence, a loss of years to our lives, a loss of friendships and relationships, the loss of health, the loss we endure relating to the dead. Even the loss concerned with the quiet and ability of our minds. Reunions bring all of that into sharp focus. There's even the loss of our façade when lies are uncovered. That's why I thought the final shots of the film - of the decaying store - made for a really poignant departing epilogue.

So, that's the nostalgic sadness of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. For Altman personally, it was a shift into a completely new direction. He hired the people he wanted, and he directed the exact way he wanted. Two of his sons were firm parts of the crew now. Robert Reed Altman was an assistant camera operator, having graduated from being a focus puller when he started on Nashville. Stephen Altman was a prop master in the art department. The closer kind of familial atmosphere was probably welcomed. The play and cinematic incarnation embraced Altman's comfort of exploring the psyche of characters, most often women, that he has a deep-seated storytelling love for. It's another reflection of That Cold Day in the Park, Images and 3 Women - while at the same time covering new ground. Using two-way mirrors in the method he does here presented a much-needed cinematic challenge. Considering the film got much better reviews than the play, I'd say this visual component enhances everything about this adapted version.

Overall, judged exactly as it is, I think this is another addition to that collection of Altman films which belong on the highest shelf. Obviously that's also down to Ed Graczyk's play, adaptation, and some award-worthy performances from the talented cast. No matter how priggish or deluded some of the characters can be, it's never hard to feel empathy for every single one of them in this - and as such it's an emotionally involving film which leaves a definite impression. Robert Altman directed a documentary about James Dean very early in his career in 1957 - a potent symbol of dreams dashed and loss. Of the fading remnants from a time when life was moving in an exciting direction. Of recollections that are still too vivid not to make the shared experience of the memory painful - no matter how nostalgic people are, and happy everything was. For the "Disciples of James Dean", that psychological visit to what remains of a decaying set is a release though - one that they may all have needed. A really great one, this.

4.5

PHOENIX74

12-20-23, 12:21 AM

https://i.postimg.cc/Z5V2nx4Y/streamers.jpg

Streamers - 1983

Directed by Robert Altman

Written by David Rabe
Based on his play

Starring Matthew Modine, Michael Wright, Mitchell Lichtenstein & David Allen Grier

Beautiful streamer open for me
Blue Skies above and no canopy
Counted nine thousand - waited too long
Reached for my ripcord - the darn thing was gone.

Beautiful streamer, why must it be
White silk above me is what I should see
Just like my mother looks over me
To hell with the ripcord, twas not made for me.

Beautiful streamer, follow me down
The time is elapsing and here is the ground
600 feet and then I can tell
If I'll go to heaven or end down in hell.

Beautiful streamer, this is the end
Gabriel is blowing "My Body Won't Mend"
All you jump happy son's of a gun
Take this last warning - Jumping's no fun
TAKE THIS LAST WARNING - JUMPING'S NO FUN

To the tune of Beautiful Dreamer, this is the song paratroopers are meant to sing when their chute doesn't open, and they face imminent death. The group of young, pensive soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division ready to be shipped to Vietnam listen to it with a very strained concern - Billy (Matthew Modine), Carlyle (Michael Wright), Richie (Mitchell Lichtenstein) and Roger (David Alan Grier). They've already been scared to death by other stories told by Cokes (George Dzundza), who has been there and returned not quite right (also constantly drunk.) Did the paratrooper he saw fly past him with a bum chute sing the song? No, he just had a stunned, confused look on his face. Underneath the fear though, are personal animosities that can't quite unify these boys facing the unenviable task of travelling half way around the world to face possible death, and certain psychological trauma.

Streamers opens with Richie patching up a young man who has slit his wrist - and trying his best to hide this from everyone else (the kid who has tried to take his own life is rather more frank about his state of mind and what he tried to do.) The first thing you notice is that both are obviously gay, but despite Richie's frequent mincing, femininity, way of dressing, and attraction to other guys in the unit the conservative Billy has talked himself into believing Richie is straight and just has some feminine traits about him. The rumble of homophobia exists in a subconcious place, but always seems to be about to erupt from Billy, Roger and Carlyle. Carlyle is the very definition of a loose cannon, and while he claims to be gay when accosing Richie, it seems more likely that he'll kill Richie if he finally confesses to him. The building tension has to erupt at some point, from somewhere. Whose chute will fail to open?

This film really excels in it's performances - all of the actors here never miss a beat and are on absolute top form. I enjoyed that aspect of Streamers very much indeed, and it's a very well written drama from David Rabe. I think as far as filming it goes though, Robert Altman was kind of stuck with a visual field that didn't offer much to him. He seems intent on bringing this to us inside of a play setting - and nothing more. Doing that, we never leave the barracks - and are stuck with row after row of bunkbeds for the entire running time of this film. I know it serves to increase that feeling of being pent-up without any recourse or escape, but there's only so much you can do with that before you've exhausted many of the movie's possibilites, and I would have loved to have seen this adapted as a full-fledged film rather than as a filmed play. The opening and ending credits though, are an atmopheric pleasure to watch - an acrobatic rifle drill in suffocating mist, with the sound of the rifles and boots determining the beat in our mind.

If I had to pinpoint what I felt this was all about I'd say fear. It seems to inform everything in this film which is both said and left unsaid. This wait to go to war is telling on these boys, and the fact that Richie is so openly gay (without ever admitting to it) is sandpaper to a raw wound for Carlyle - either because he's also gay or because he's homophobic (or perhaps both.) There's enough internalized angst amongst this group of fellow soldiers already. It seems like they're always at a breaking point - and occasionally frivilous relief is just that - relieving - but we're more often tightening the bolt on everyone in the barracks. A visit from a drunk Cokes and an also very drunk Sgt. Rooney (Guy Boyd), who craves action (at least while he's hammered), only serves to increase the pounding pressure. The two sergeants are at that stage of drunkenness that's frightening for the fact that a person is liable to do anything when so inebriated. There's no outlet. Left unsaid, but also an added pressure point is the fact that Carlyle and Roger are African Americans - something that seems to define them in everybody's mind.

Cinematographer Pierre Mignot would be with Altman throughout his 'filmed play' phase, from previous feature Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean to his segment in Aria. I found his work here very claustrophobic - we never get very far from the pent up young men here. There is enough technique to keep a film lover interested. The art direction saw Stephen Altman taking another step forward, becoming sole art director on Streamers. Robert Reed Altman was still an assistant Camera operator and part of the Electrical Department. So Robert Altman's two sons continued to work for him - but I don't see it as nepotism when they're doing these kind of jobs. It'd be different if they had lead roles, or were writing/performing terrible tunes - lord knows that happens a lot in the movie industry (think Jaden Smith or Frank Stallone.)

All-up, Streamers is undeniably powerful and has a psychological component that's really meaningful without being pretentious. I don't think I would have got anything less from it if I'd seen it on stage - but since I'd probably never have that opportunity I'm glad it exists on film. As a film though, I'm not sure if it does enough visually to really justify making it so true to a stage performance. Even if there were a few establishing shots, I'd have felt that wouldn't have detracted from the whole strict 'play' theme - (and as mentioned above, the credits sequence was great and fused with the concept no problem.) The film as a whole was met with mostly rave reviews, but it's release would have been festival and art house-based. The entire ensemble was voted Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival - and I have to agree and reiterate that the performances in this film are quite brilliant. Vietnam would be a hot topic film-wise in the '80s, but none of those films would be as oblique in their meaning, or as location-bound, as Streamers.

3.5