MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

M*A*S*H

(M*A*S*H [de])

USA 1970
d: Robert Altman
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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McCabe & Mrs. Miller

(McCabe und Mrs. Miller [de])

USA 1971
d: Robert Altman
Warner Home Video (Region 0 us)

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One of the best of Altman's early movies, using classic themes - the ill-fated love of gambler and whore, the gunman who dies by the gun, the contest between little man and big business - to produce a non-heroic Western. McCabe (Beatty) hasn't the grand dimensions of a Ford, Fuller or Leone hero; he is an amiable braggart, a bungling lover, a third-rate entrepreneur with chronic indigestion and a penchant for bad jokes. Mrs Miller (Christie) is a whorehouse madame who prefers her opium pipe to McCabe's amorous overtures. Their relationship is to a large extent a mournful background to Altman's central concern of chronicling the harsh conditions of life in a rawly developing mining town in the Northwest. His vision of the role of the individual represents another removal from genre tradition. Confronted with the primitive character of social organisation and the brutality of nature, Altman's Westerner is insignificant, isolated and vulnerable; his survival is chancy, a question of luck rather than skill.
— JdeG, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
What many consider to be Robert Altman's best film is a western, set in some wild, frozen corner of the Northwest Territory, where somehow there exists the shanty town of Presbyterian Church. And an itinerant, bluffing gambler named John McCabe (Warren Beatty). And a professional whore and realist named Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) with whom McCabe has both a business relationship and something akin to love. And a host of Altman characters, miners and whores whose mumbled reveries and half-expressed movements reflect the tenuousness of life in the precariously built town barely able to protect them from the changing seasons (superbly captured by Vilmos Zsigmond's photography) and politics. It's a western, but an Altman western, filled with Altman humor, Altman moods and Altman absurdities. When McCabe goes out to face the mining company's hired guns, it's morning, not High Noon; and Mrs. Miller, the realist, has already retreated to the sure indifference of the opium pipe.
— PFA
•••••
Like many westerns of the last forty years "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" can be considered as a kind of anti-western. Its characters' romantic hopes and dreams flounder against the vicissitudes of 'progress' and big business. In this respect the film is reminiscent of John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) and pre-emptive of Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" (1995). It also shares many of the concerns, landscapes and geography of Anthony Mann's "The Far Country" (1955), a film equally concerned with the fading or dying of particular myths and territories. Rather than focus upon the myths of frontier, individualism and the destruction of the wilderness by 'civilisation', McCabe contrasts various models of entrepreneurship, situating McCabe's failure as being largely the result of the mundanity of his business acumen and vision (and not his choice of business as a whorehouse manager).
Another remarkable element of this film is its use of music, and more generally, of sound. Much of the opening thirty minutes of the film is difficult to follow and requires both an attentive eye and ear, or at least a recognition that the film wont do everything for you. McCabe is famous for disorientating many of its early audiences when the soundtrack was even muddier than it became in the subsequent release prints. Meanwhile, Leonard Cohen's songs, often criticised as banal or half-baked, are integral to the tone and structure of the film. They drift in and out, sometimes coalescing with the images or story, while at other times providing a rough counterpoint. At no time is this relationship solid and clearly marked and the music (along with the washed-out, extremely yellow imagery intended to simulate late nineteenth century photography) also contributes to the dream-like quality of the film. Despite its firm placement within the revisionist frames of the New Hollywood, and Altman's own seemingly systematic revisiting of genre cinema, McCabe is amongst the most classical of anti-Westerns (and like many of Altman's films its subject is ostensibly the meaning of the term 'America'). Counter to the acid westerns of Hopper or the ultra-violence of much Peckinpah, "McCabe" sits alongside "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" (Sam Peckinpah, in a more wistful mode, 1970) as an autumnal, almost wintry, western - less country than folk, imperfectly but perfectly scored by the melancholy and broken tenor of Cohen's voice.
— Adrian Danks, Just Some Jesus Looking for a Manger: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, sensesofcinema August 2000

The Long Goodbye

(Der Tod kennt keine Wiederkehr [de])

USA 1973
d: Robert Altman
MGM/UA Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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Despite cries of outrage from hard-line Chandler purists, this is, along with Hawks' "The Big Sleep", easily the most intelligent of all screen adaptations of the writer's work. Altman in fact stays pretty close to the novel's basic narrative (though there are a couple of crucial changes), but where he comes up with something totally original is in his ironic updating of the story and characters: Gould's Marlowe is a laid-back, shambling slob who, despite his incessant claim that everything is 'OK with me,' actually harbours the same honourable ideals as Chandler's Marlowe; but those values, Altman implies, just don't fit in with the neurotic, uncaring, ephemeral lifestyle led by the 'Me Generation' of modern LA. As Marlowe attempts to protect a friend suspected of battering his wife to death, and gets up to his neck in blackmail, suicide, betrayal and murder, Altman constructs not only a comment on the changes in values in America over the last three decades, but a critique of film noir mythology: references, both ironic and affectionate, to Chandler (cats and alcoholism) and to earlier private-eye thrillers abound. Shot in gloriously steely colours by Vilmos Zsigmond with a continually moving camera, wondrously scripted by Leigh Brackett (who worked on "The Big Sleep"), and superbly acted all round, it's one of the finest movies of the '70s.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Ten years later, it may be easier to see that Altman didn't fail Raymond Chandler. He simply rearranged the elements of the Marlowe myth with the amusement that didn't believe anyone could take such junk seriously anymore. "The Long Goodbye" sees how far American space, light, ideals and actions have been affected by film and its sweet untruths. It's a tranquil satire on a world devoid of wholesome or honest people, but full of would-be character actors: Ken Sansom's gateman at the Malibu Colony is its natural spokesman, always imitating old stars. And so, Altman cast Sterling Hayden and Nina Van Pallandt, less as actors than as living legends—the towering drunk author full of guilt, and the dried apricot English blonde, wide-eyed but shady. Jim Bouton is proof of Altman's assurance that fame is the best qualification for being in a picture, and if only Mark Rydell films were as good, funny and alarming as his performance here. Throughout the sliding, breathing gallery of faces and small parts, Elliott Gould is as persistent and witty as the title song—a grand old 'It's-all-right-with-me' tribute to laid-back presence, and so subtle a portrait of passive resistance that he makes Gandhi look pre-Griffith. "The Long Goodbye" is so ironic a title—as if we could ever get the distortions of Hollywood out of our system. It is the system; L.A. is a movie skin stretched across the sky, and just because he declines to act, Gould acquires a dignity not dreamed of by Bogart in "The Big Sleep". He is also a deadpan, awful reminder that there are still real people, living with their cats.
— David Thomson, PFA
•••••
Even in a post-noir context, "The Long Goodbye" evokes the emotions of a mainstream film noir. The powerlessness of its independent protagonists, Marlowe and Eileen Wade, to untangle a moral dilemma in a modern, corrupt world make them prototypically noir. While Marlowe may not verbalize his sense of anachronistic despair as directly as Hickey or Boggs, he shares their ability to endure physical and emotional punishment. As a p.i. Marlowe is expected from genre convention to understand and discern a solution to this puzzle; but even the police know more than he does.
Unlike the attitudes of the police conveyed in film noir of the classic period, the "modern" corruption of the police in "The Long Goodbye" is not caused by individual ambition and greed but by overload and burn-out. All the police want is their paperwork completed, a murder confessed, and a suicide certified by the proper official. They crave simple solutions regardless of conflicting facts because they lack energy and time to explore alternative answers. While Chandler's novels use the police as identifiable personalities and antagonists, Altman makes the police relatively anonymous and surly, interchangeable and unimportant. A policeman's face is never lingered upon in the film without a distracting element occurring simultaneously. When Marlowe is interrogated at the station, he is the center of the frame while the police circle about him like gnats firing questions. All the while Marlowe plays with the inky smears left by the fingerprinting procedure. He does this while looking at his reflection in a two-way mirror, as if to demonstrate his contempt for the police authorities he knows are watching on the other side of the glass. Later, when he confronts the police face to face at the scene of Wade's suicide, Marlowe drunkenly waves a wine glass in their faces while they exhibit little expression. ...
Even in a post-noir context, "The Long Goodbye" evokes the emotions of a mainstream film noir. The powerlessness of its independent protagonists, Marlowe and Eileen Wade, to untangle a moral dilemma in a modern, corrupt world make them prototypically noir. While Marlowe may not verbalize his sense of anachronistic despair as directly as Hickey or Boggs, he shares their ability to endure physical and emotional punishment. As a p.i. Marlowe is expected from genre convention to understand and discern a solution to this puzzle; but even the police know more than he does.
Unlike the attitudes of the police conveyed in film noir of the classic period, the "modern" corruption of the police in "The Long Goodbye" is not caused by individual ambition and greed but by overload and burn-out. All the police want is their paperwork completed, a murder confessed, and a suicide certified by the proper official. They crave simple solutions regardless of conflicting facts because they lack energy and time to explore alternative answers. While Chandler's novels use the police as identifiable personalities and antagonists, Altman makes the police relatively anonymous and surly, interchangeable and unimportant. A policeman's face is never lingered upon in the film without a distracting element occurring simultaneously. When Marlowe is interrogated at the station, he is the center of the frame while the police circle about him like gnats firing questions. All the while Marlowe plays with the inky smears left by the fingerprinting procedure. He does this while looking at his reflection in a two-way mirror, as if to demonstrate his contempt for the police authorities he knows are watching on the other side of the glass. Later, when he confronts the police face to face at the scene of Wade's suicide, Marlowe drunkenly waves a wine glass in their faces while they exhibit little expression.
— Elizabeth Ward, The Post-Noir P.I.: "The Long Goodbye" and "Hickey and Boggs"

Thieves Like Us

(Diebe wie wir [de])

USA 1974
d: Robert Altman
MGM Home Entertainment (Region 0 de)

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Perhaps Altman's most persistently charming film, a remake of Nicholas Ray's "They Live By Night" (or rather, second adaptation of Edward Anderson's novel), in which a trio of semi-competent bank robbers attempt to emulate the big-time gangsters publicised by the media, comics, and radio serials, and finally get their come-uppance after a brief respite from prison and poverty. Altman adheres to Ray's conception of the youngest criminal (Carradine) and his plain-Jane lover (Duvall) as innocents all at sea in an uncaring world, although the tone here is one of bitter-sweet irony rather than romantic pessimism. And while casting a critical eye on Depression America, with a New Deal being promised that would keep democracy safe, there is none of the cynicism that has occasionally flawed some of Altman's fascinating genre parodies/tributes. Never portentous, never a mere spoof, this is a touching, intelligent, and - in its own small way - rather wonderful movie.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide 13
•••••
A well-done remake of THEY LIVE BY NIGHT that's slightly long but unusually free of Altman's customary indulgences. A 1930s crime story with humor and humanity, THIEVES LIKE US owes more than a passing nod to BONNIE AND CLYDE and BADLANDS in theme and treatment. Young killer-crook Carradine escapes from a Mississippi jail with older, hard-bitten criminals Remsen and Schuck. After a brief respite, they return to the only way they know how to make a living: robbing banks.
Unlike BONNIE AND CLYDE, there is a real love story between Carradine and Duvall that comes across. The music and background sounds were supplied by John Dunning, who is credited for "radio research." He provided radio shows like "Gangbusters," "The Heart of Gold," remote band broadcasts, and an actual "Romeo and Juliet" dramatization that is heard while Duvall and Carradine are making love. Most of the killings are referred to rather than seen, so this is a character study more than a violence film. The executive producer was George Litto, who used to be Altman's agent and was making his bow in production. Litto was later responsible for a few of De Palma's debacles. Fletcher, wife of producer Bick, makes her film debut in this picture. Remsen, who is one of Altman's stock company, has another career as one of the most respected casting directors in Hollywood. Coscreenwriter Tewkesbury makes a cameo.
— TV MovieGuide
•••••
In THIEVES LIKE US, the characters are not merely products of the American Dream; they're the dreamers who keep it going, as well. They're myth buyers, consumers who devour the Dream as if, at first, their identities and then their very lives depend upon the intake. In fact, for some of them, the price is just that steep. But there is a stubborn glow about these people that often eclipses their desperation and marks them as part of Altman’s growing collection of beautiful losers.
As in most of Altman’s previous films, the core of THIEVES LIKE US is firmly rooted in the director’s vision of a rotten American Dream. MCCABE & MRS. MILLER—released in 1971 and still the finest expression of that vision—established Altman’s reputation as a Hollywood director with the talent and impertinence to meddle with a precious American myth and explode it. THIEVES LIKE US, set in rural Mississippi in the midst of the Depression, is a reflection on that explosion—an examination, in fact, of the debris. ...
Anderson’s book evokes a sense of doom, as well, but primarily through the mouths of its characters. Written in the middle of the Depression, the novel lacks the wry, affectionate humor and visual grace endemic to Altman’s style. When Anderson tries for atmosphere directly, his tone is labored and dry. Altman’s film, on the other hand, virtually floats along.
Buffety’s moist cinematography generates the look of a thirties period piece, to be sure, but doesn't stop there. Like a silent conspirator in league with the elements, the camera bridges the gap between one shower and the next, soaking the film in a liquid, suffocating softness. It’s a texture richly suited to the suggestion of unchecked vegetation, of overripe dreams and decay, and it is reinforced by the conflict between a verdant landscape and the increasingly muted and somber colors in which Altman shrouds his characters.
Yet sobriety—a key to the Anderson novel—is not the spirit that moves THIEVES LIKE US. Visually, Altman achieves a sense of wasteland through an almost perverse excess of water. Aurally, he gets it with humor. Working in collaboration with Calder Willingham and Joan Twinberry, Altman has devised a delightfully mischievous screenplay that relaxes the severity of Anderson’s dialogue while preserving major portions of it. The jocularity running through THIEVES LIKE US doesn't counter the book’s bleak naturalism but gently supports it like a friendly, lumpy cushion. For example, there’s an ongoing joke in the film between Bowie and Keechie, a silly riddle to which she never has the answer. “What’s the Mississippi State Animal?” Bowie might ask, or Flower, or Tree. The answer: a Squashed Dog in the Road; a Weed; a Telephone Pole. Anonymous, barren images like these suggest not the state of Mississippi, but a state of desperation.
The critical complaints waged against the film’s extensive use of thirties radio programs on its soundtrack echo the objections made to the film’s elemental cinematography: pure artifice, period recreation for its own sake. Nonsense! One of the film’s primary characters—its antagonist, really—is the Radio. For just as Altman’s characters are myth buyers, the Radio functions here as myth barker, hawking its American Dream of love songs and glamour and Norge Home Appliances to people who can't afford the price. The use of Radio works logically and naturalistically throughout most of THIEVES LIKE US to create often brutally funny and sometimes merely pathetic contrasts between the illusions to which the characters cling and the banal reality of their lives. ...
THIEVES LIKE US remains a haunting and disquieting film and suffers little diffusion from what seems a plethora of gangster-couple movies in our midst. It entertains defects, but its strengths far outweigh them. And one of those strengths lies in characterization: the people who inhabit THIEVES LIKE US grow. Not in a universal or tragic sense, and not in a way that might save them. Some become more foolish; some more enraged; some become old before their time. But they change—like people you live with—gradually, naturally, at times almost imperceptibly. And, because they change, they live.
— Catherine Plumb, Jump Cut, no. 2, 1974, pp. 5-6
•••••
Altman plays up our feelings of sympathetic involvement with Carradine and Duvall by photographing them in soft light, using gently flowing tracking shots. We share the lovers’ sense of newness in each of their three sexual encounters by viewing each one from a different angle: the first from the foot of the bed and the last two from either side. While the radio announcer’s repetitive comments present these acts of copulation as simply more of the same thing, Altman’s visual strategy gives us a more subjective view of the lovemaking as it is experienced by Bowie and Keechie themselves.
Thus, despite its surface comedy, the scene inspires us with strong feelings of tenderness and compassion toward the young lovers and a tragic apprehension about the inevitable doom that awaits them. The aesthetic merit of THIEVES LIKE US derives from its daringly eclectic blend of comic and tragic elements. We may find ourselves laughing at many points during the lovemaking episode, but the sequence as a whole draws on a wide range of emotions to achieve an ultimately tragic impact. Altman’s extraordinary ability to integrate these normally disparate feelings in a single scene is a key factor in his artistry, an artistry which easily justifies his pre-eminence among American directors.
— Virginia Wright Wexman, Jump Cut, no. 2, 1974, p. 7

Nashville

(Nashville [de] )

USA 1975
d: Robert Altman
Paramount Home Video (Region 1 us)

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A landmark American film, Altman's breathtakingly assured C&W epic has perhaps exerted an even greater influence on non-Hollywood cinema. Certainly its disdain for the tidy niceties of conventional narrative (it merely follows the mostly none-too-consequential fortunes of 24 musicians, managers, politicians, promoters and punters variously involved in, or connected to, a weekend music festival in Nashville, Tennessee) makes for an unusually illuminating perspective in terms of character, mood and moral insight. But the impressionistic vignettes, coupled with the expert use of overlapping dialogue, also build slowly but surely to create a coherent and persuasive portrait of a society that has somewhere along the way carelessly abandoned its original ideals and turned instead to the false gods of fame, fortune, easy sentiment, self-congratulation and political expediency. If, as some claim, the final assassination attempt is a rather weak attempt at gathering up the many loose ends, that invalidates neither Nashville's vision of a world where appearances count for more than substance, nor the originality and imagination with which it expresses that vision. A masterpiece.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Altman's insistence on composite sound tracks created problems for sound and image editors alike. In the Hollywood tradition, where each character's speech remains separate, the process of editing is relatively straightforward. With overlapping dialogue, the principle of discrete segments is violated and the editor's job becomes increasingly complex. Further complications are caused by Altman's practice of recording secondary dialogue and sound effects live, simultaneously with principal dialogue. While it is possible, with traditional recording techniques, to achieve some isolation between sound sources on separate recording channels, there is a limit to the separation available frome standard microphones.
In the early seventies, Altman and his crew set out to solve this problem. Seeking an arrangement that would facilitate recording of improvised dialogue and the realistic reproduction of overlapping dialogue, simultaneous secondary conversations, and a broad spectrum of sound effects, Altman also insisted on a technology that would reduce the need for retakes and simplify some of the editing problems caused by the uneasy marriage of single-channel technology with a multi-channel approach to sound phenomena. The solution was found in the music industry. Whereas traditional film technique calls for a single boom-mounted microphone, hardwired to a single-channel recorder, music recording typically involves a separate mike for each performer or section of an orchestra. Fed into an 8-track recorder, the various musical inputs may then be individually modified and mixed as desired. ...
In order to assure versatility and source separation, the Altman system makes use of radio microphones, with a separate mike for each character and sound effect source. Since each mike picks up only one character, neither improvisation on the set nor overlapping dialogue nor even simultaneous conversations present a real problem, for each track can be separately adjusted in terms of volume, reverb, equalization, and other factors. In the terminology of Altman's sound crew, this approach "unmixes" the sound. ...
In order to create a space permitting multiple, overlapping dialogues, Altman early adopted the use of a broad-range zoom lens, permitting continuous focus from extreme long shot to large close-up. Commonly defining large spaces with one end of the zoom, often in repeated master shots from different angles, Altman then uses multiple dialogues and other off-screen sound sources to represent the continued presence of that large space - "Altmanscope", as it is termed by Henry Gibson. While sound continues to guarantee the presence of a broad expanse, the zoom lens closes in on a smaller part of the overall space. In a particularly symbiotic fashion, the ampleness of the space justifies the multiplicity of sound sources, while the richness of the sound track testifies to the continued presence of the large space. ...
The sound technique throughout the film has led us to believe that Altman's 24-track technology puts the auditor in the mixer's chair. It is our responsibility to choose which part of the sound track we will listen to, our responsibility to decide where importance lies. In the elaborately symbolic sound scenario developed by Altman throughout "Nashville", the previous scenes serve as a simulacrum of sound collection, with all the separate sounds finally coming together in the concluding Parthenon gathering, ready for the final mix-down. Starting in different locations and in differing situations, the characters are one by one collected for the ultimate performance: twenty-four separate sound sources, twenty-four separate tracks ready to be blended in a final multi-layered mix.
— Rick Altman: 24-Track Narrative? Robert Altman's "Nashville", in: CiNéMAS Vol. 1, nos. 3

A Wedding

(Eine Hochzeit [de])

USA 1978
d: Robert Altman
Kinowelt Home Entertainment (Region 0 de)

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The Player

(The Player [de])

USA 1992
d: Robert Altman
New Line Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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Shrewd Hollywood exec Griffin Mill (Robbins) is already paranoid that a rival may join the studio; but what of the anonymous postcards he's getting from a scriptwriter whose pitch he hasn't followed up? Rattled by the death threats, he decides (wrongly) that the likely sender is David Kahane (D'Onofrio). But when Kahane is found dead after a meeting with Mill and it becomes known that Mill is dating the writer's ungrieving lover (Scacchi), his troubles multiply... Altman turns Michael Tolkin's thriller into the most honest, hilarious Hollywood satire ever, even persuading some 60 celebs to play themselves. Besides the superb performances, photography, music and seamless blend of comedy and tension, what's finally so special about the film is its form. Altman refines his open, 'democratic' style of the '70s, to show an untidy world from numerous shifting perspectives, yet the film is far from chaotic. With its many movie references and film-within-a-film structure, it's forever owning up to the fact that it's only a movie. Only? Were more films as complex and revealing about people, society and the way we watch and think about films, today's Hollywood product would be far more interesting than it is.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Entertaining but shallow, this 1992 Hollywood roast of the film industry—directed by Robert Altman, and adapted by Michael Tolkin from his own novel—is supposed to be scathing, but it's scathing mainly in the Entertainment Weekly sense, and the pleasure it affords is like that you get from watching the Oscars: celebrity spotting and in-jokes. The setup is a would-be noir situation: a studio executive (Tim Robbins) nervous about his position starts to get anonymous threatening mail from a disgruntled screenwriter and winds up committing a murder. As is customary in Altman ensemble pieces, the surface activity keeps one occupied, but never adds up to much because none of the characters is developed beyond the cartoon level; and the snobby sense of knowingness that's over everything is uncomfortably close to what the movie is supposed to be dissecting.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Short Cuts

(Short Cuts [de])

USA 1993
d: Robert Altman
Criterion (Region 1 us)

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From the exhilarating opening, you know Altman's epic 'adaptation' of eight stories and a poem by Raymond Carver is going to be special. Like Nashville, it's a tragicomic kaleidoscope of numerous barely interlinked stories (plus a similarly portentous ending). Here, the focus is on couples whose relationships are, at one point or another, subjected to small, seismic shudders of doubt, disappointment or, in a few cases, disaster. A surgeon suspects his wife's fidelity; a pool-cleaner worries over his partner's phone-sex job; a waitress is racked by guilt after running down a child; a baker makes sinister phone calls to the injured boy's parents; the discovery of a corpse threatens a fishing-trip...and a marriage. The marvellous performances bear witness to Altman's iconoclastic good sense, with Tomlin, Waits, Modine, Robbins, MacDowell and the rest lending the film's mostly white, middle-class milieu an authenticity seldom found in American cinema. But the real star is Altman, whose fluid, clean camera style, free-and-easy editing, and effortless organisation of a complex narrative are quite simply the mark of a master.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Robert Altman returns to the anthology mode of "Nashville" and "A Wedding" to offer 22 crisscrossing characters and nine loosely related plots set in Los Angeles over a breezy 189 minutes. Inevitably it's a mixed bag, though the film's assurance in keeping it all coherent is at times exhilarating. The script, authored by Altman and Frank Barhydt, claims to be based on the writings of Raymond Carver, but apart from a few characters and situations that have been borrowed as launching pads, the connections to Carver are pretty tenuous. ... Ross also gets to sing some fine jazz tunes and torch songs that work a lot better than Mark Isham's standard-issue New Age score. Whatever the limitations and irritations involved in this enterprise, it's still energetic risk taking that has much more to offer than the glib self-congratulation of "The Player", not to mention most other Hollywood offerings.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
•••••
Altman’s greatness as a director rests principally in that improvisatory brilliance, in his uncanny knack with actors. (In a cast so large and uniformly superb, it seems unfair to pick any of them out—even though the company’s elder, Jack Lemmon, is the one handed a big, virtuoso, movie-stealing monologue.) It also lies in what Michael Tolkin (who adapted the screenplay for "The Player" from his own novel) describes as Altman’s ability to free up an entire film company to do their best work, his unique obsession with the whole process of making movies—the fact that he won’t quit, no matter what. (“Admire me,” Altman said once, “not for how I succeed, not for how ‘good’ the films are, but for the fact that I keep going back and jumping off the cliff.”) ...
"Short Cuts" is one of those marriages of seeming opposites that works. What Altman does with Carver, by placing these people in another of his rich, boisterously populated “collage” films, is to show how every city (especially L.A.) is, in a way, a community of the isolated. Altman’s cuts may even give us more of a sense of truth than Carver’s stories alone, because they recognize more of the absurd and terrible interconnections of life, the consequences that most of us choose to ignore.
Part of the greatness of the film, which is one of the triumphs of recent American moviemaking, lies in the inclusiveness of its portrait, the way it gives such an omniscient sense of character, of milieu. And part also lies in "Short Cuts"’s recognition that nothing in life is ever resolved, that there are not only no happy endings, but virtually no endings at all.
— Michael Wilmington

Kansas City

(Kansas City [de])

USA / France 1996
d: Robert Altman
New Line Home Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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It's 1934, and Kansas City - the wide-open capital of jazz, gambling and crime run by 'Boss' Tom Pendergast - is hotting up, not only for the local elections, but for a 'cutting contest' between top tenors Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. But the only thing that concerns 'Blondie' O'Hara (Leigh), apart from wanting to be like her idol Jean Harlow, is how to get back her beloved Johnny (Mulroney), a petty thief held by gang-boss and night-club owner Seldom Seen (Belafonte) after a heist gone wrong. In kidnapping laudanum-addict Carolyn Stilton (Richardson), the wife of a bigwig adviser to Roosevelt, O'Hara hopes to force an exchange. Notwithstanding a slim central narrative thread (the shifts in the relationship between O'Hara and Stilton) and a mannered performance from Leigh, Altman's film mostly succeeds as a rich tapestry of characters, subplots, themes and events. Though the structure may seem loose (the film repeatedly abandons the plotline proper for scenes of the blowing jazzers at the Hey-Hey Club), it's actually subtle and tight, with a strange, adventurous arrangement of flashbacks, and unexpected links gradually and cleverly revealed between seemingly unconnected characters. Of the many fine performances, Belafonte, Richardson and the ever dependable Brooke Smith (as Blondie's sister) are probably the stand-outs, while the music (from the likes of Joshua Redman, Craig Handy, James Carter, David Murray, Geri Allen and Ron Carter) is simply a blast.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
The sets—designed by Stephen Altman—are great, and so is the 30s jazz, but the story of this Robert Altman memory piece about his hometown, written with Frank Barhydt (Short Cuts), is borderline terrible. It counts on the dubious premise that a gangster (Harry Belafonte) would fritter away a whole night deciding what to do with a thief who rips him off—thereby enabling the thief's significant other (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to kidnap a society lady (Miranda Richardson) and Altman to crosscut to his heart's content as he exposes the inner workings of a city on the eve of a local election. The conception of character is so limited that the kidnapper's seems to consist exclusively of Jean Harlow imitations, while the kidnappee's seems defined by drug addiction. Charlie Parker and his mother are gratuitously shoehorned into the plot, though some of the movie's other strategies for imparting period flavor work better. The flip cynicism, which by now has become Altman's trademark, doesn't work at all.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
•••••
Cultural time. Altman's dreaming of his film's moment is sprinkled with references and allusions to that time, building up an impasto of 1934ness. But his dreaming isn't locked in 1934, it only starts there. His historical media bric-a-brac were around in 1934, but almost all of them were only just beginning then, to go on to much longer careers through the rest of the '30s and into the next decades. Combined they offer a selection of material from radio, movies, comic strips, painting, to gladden the heart of pop culture pioneer Gilbert Seldes (the movie doesn't mention him): Tarzan, Amos “n” Andy, Blondie (the comic strip/the character name), Mantan Moreland, Edward Hopper (a visual reference), Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in Hold Your Man (Blondie models herself on tough, early 1930s movie women and wants to be seen as Jean Harlow; throughout the film, as a perverse, insider gesture, Altman has her purse and twist her lips so that she looks like a character in Geo. ...
These sorts of things are what half the movie is about. The other half is a dream memory of Kansas City jazz. The philosophic, vicious monologist gangster Seldom Seen runs a club in which his space for crime business is contiguous with the musicians' performance space, and it is his indulgence to have the musicians playing 24 hours a day for his pleasure (like Duke Ellington keeping his orchestra together when it wasn't profitable). The jazz creeps into the film bit by bit. The music numbers get longer. The music intrudes itself into the other scenes. The music becomes its own story as some of the best jazz musicians of the 1990s play in period costume their version of music 60 years old. And like another film with two very different, parallel realities, Shinoda's "Demon Pond" (1979), at the end one reality prevails and the other disappears. At the end of this film, there is only the music.
— Rick Thompson, sensesofcinema, September 2003

The Gingerbread Man

(Gingerbread Man - Gefährliche Träume [de])

USA 1998
d: Robert Altman
Universal Pictures Video (Region 1 us)

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Almost as soon as hotshot Savannah lawyer Rick Magruder (Branagh) picks up waitress Mallory Doss (Davidtz), you know he's being set up. If he's the shark here, she's the angler - that's the way these stories work. It's late and a hurricane's brewing, so Rick drives her home. She vents as she strips: her father is crazed, she explains, and threatening to kill her. She doesn't know where to turn, she says, turning to Rick, naked. He takes her and her case. Committed for psychiatric evaluation, her old man (Duvall) escapes with havoc in his heart. Altman and John Grisham make uneasy bedfellows, the one inspired by accident and chaos, the other a control freak, moralist and conservative. In this, Altman's wet and windy film of an unpublished Grisham story, the director keeps squeezing narrative strictures; it's an open and shut case with too much emotional baggage to fit. To a degree, the two authors cancel each other out - the movie probably won't satisfy fans of either.
— TCh, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
... if "The Gingerbread Man" didn't come out of a market-driven sensibility, it's hard to imagine what else could have led to such a lackluster result--a movie with no driving justification at all. I went in hopes of seeing an Altman film, especially after having heard that a version recut without Altman's input tested so badly with preview audiences that PolyGram reluctantly decided to release the director's version instead. Yet the director's version is recognizable as an Altman film only in a few particulars. I spotted a handful of visual standbys, such as his preference for filming sequences in long shot, with a certain amount of restless drift from pans and zooms, and a taste for motifs derived from TV news reports incidentally seen and heard in various interiors. ... I can't say whether "The Gingerbread Man" is as dull as it is because Grisham's material defeated Altman or because Altman's methodology defeated Grisham. I can only hypothesize that the usual Altman impulse to mock genres may have been tempered in this case by monetary concerns—or by not having material substantial enough to undercut.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Dr. T & the Women

(Dr. T & the Women [de] )

USA / Germany 2000
d: Robert Altman
Artisan Entertainment (Region 1 us)

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Sullivan Travis (Gere) is Dallas's most successful gynaecologist. Maybe it's his medical skill, maybe it's because he listens well, maybe it's because he not only loves women, but regards each individual as so special as to be worthy of worship. But if that's so, why is his wife Kate (Fawcett) cracking up? Is it due merely to the imminent wedding of their youngest, Dee Dee (Hudson), or to the visit of her sister Peggy (Dern)? And how will Dr T cope with all this? No wonder he spends more and more time on the fairway, often in the company of the new assistant pro - yet another female, Bree (Hunt). Though Altman's film, another large ensemble piece, has been knocked as shrill and misogynistic, it's considerably more complex than that. It's certainly not woman-hating: unlike the good doctor, whose adulation of all females is deluded, perhaps even deleterious, Altman and writer Anne Rapp prefer their women warts and all. It's the absurd (man's?) world they live in that's at fault. If the babble in some group scenes gets a bit much, it's countered by moments of genuine tenderness, neat observation and astute insights into love.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
Prior to its hyperbolic final act, this is one of Robert Altman's most skillful and least bombastic features in some time. But I'm uncomfortable with the blatant misogyny at its center, which isn't mitigated by the fact that the script was written by a woman—Anne Rapp, who also wrote Cookie's Fortune. This comedy about a devoted gynecologist in Dallas, well played by Richard Gere, takes much of its energy from enumerating the ways that most of the women in Dr. T's upper-class orbit turn out to be basket cases: his patients, his wife (who has a nervous breakdown and regresses to her girlhood early in the picture), his receptionist, and at least one of his daughters (a closet lesbian about to get married). The most prominent exception is the golf pro he falls for (Helen Hunt), and though the film doesn't quite fault her for her independence, it confusedly treats the hero's desires as far more important than hers. Dallas is lampooned as glibly and creatively as Nashville was in the Altman film of that title, and the mise en scene and overlapping dialogue are both handled deftly.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
•••••
Altman's last three films have retreated from the childish scorn of "Prêt-à-Porter" and the obtuse autobiography of "Kansas City" (1996), and moved into territories which although explicitly marked by Altman's immediately recognisable free-flowing style, hide behind the authorial fudging of adaptation and collaboration. Thus, although "Dr T" may seem very much like an old man's filmic fantasy or nightmare, it was actually written by a woman, Anne Rapp, and reportedly represents her actual experiences within the Dallas milieu the film haughtily sketches in. Similarly, the film relies upon the blandness and indistinctness of its Dallas locales, its only real reference to such historical events as the Kennedy assassination and historical personages as Belle Star, being found in the job of one of Dr T's daughters (a tour guide on Dealey Plaza), a vague reference to Star, and the permanent influence of Jackie Kennedy on the clothing, style and manner of many of the women who troupe into Dr T's surgery. More sustained connections might also be found to the television series that takes the city as its name (and which features a similarly monickered male central character).
— Adrian Danks, sensesofcinema March-April 2001

Gosford Park

(Gosford Park [de])

UK / USA 2001
d: Robert Altman
Universal Pictures Video (Region 2 de)

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Altman's unexpected venture into Agatha Christie territory works a treat. The setting is an English country house, the year 1932, and the many and varied heirs to the McCordle family inheritance congregate for the weekend to bag pheasants, ruffle some feathers, and suck up to the old man (Gambon). Each has a maid or a valet in tow. Upstairs, everyone knows his or her place, and social proprieties are strictly observed. Downstairs, as above, so below, where the visiting servants are even known by their masters' names. Yet behind this orderly facade resentments fester, and when McCordle is found dead over his brandy, there's no shortage of suspects. We all know that Altman can throw a party, but it's a pleasant surprise how much respect he's accorded Julian Fellowes' witty, intricate screenplay, from an idea by Altman himself and actor/producer Balaban. The family relationships could be a bit clearer, but the danger that the audience might get swamped by the several dozen speaking parts is circumvented by a glittering, instantly recognisable cast, plus a couple of tour guides: first, Balaban's droll Hollywood producer, researching the mysteries of British etiquette for his next B-movie; then Kelly Macdonald's novice personal maid, getting pointers from her splendidly barbed mistress (Smith) and from a 'seen it all before' domestic (Watson). Altman has such fun satirising the affectations and casual cruelties of the class system, it's almost a shame when he finally gets down to plot machinations - whodunit is the least of it.
— TCh, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
This upstairs-downstairs comedy drama, set in 1932 in an English country house, is probably Robert Altman's most accomplished film since the 70s. Among its virtues are the discipline exercised by its fine English cast, a good script by Julian Fellowes (based on ideas by Altman and costar Bob Balaban) that incorporates certain aspects of Agatha Christie-style whodunit, and the interesting ground rule that no guest be shown unless a servant is present in the same scene. There are more characters of interest here than in "Nashville", and an almost constantly moving camera (less noticeably employed than in "The Long Goodbye") tends to objectify the relationships among them.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader