Robert Altman’s free-flowing, improvisatory style remains unique. Although he has been widely eulogized during this last week as one of the great filmmakers, and had inspired a near-reverential devotion in many directors as well as filmgoers, few have tried to imitate him (and fewer have succeeded).
The closest offspring may have come on television: the improvised content (and wickedly knowing satire of Southern California) of Curb Your Enthusiasm; the off-center, pseudo-documentary style of The Office; the multilayered characters and storylines and camera movements of the best early episodes of ER and The West Wing. Even this is not an exact comparison, but those shows are closer to Altman than, say, Crash, the multi-character, multi-plot Oscar winner that could be compared (unfavorably) to Nashville and Short Cuts.
Altman’s career was remarkably long, and he successfully reinvented himself more than once, but his greatest achievements nearly all came in the seven year period that started with M*A*S*H (1970) and ended with Three Women (1977). He made seven brilliant movies in that time, and only he could have made them: McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, and Nashville, bookended by M*A*S*H and Three Women (the first half of which is quite wonderful). He even made a few other movies during the period that are generally less highly regarded: Brewster McCloud, Images, and Buffalo Bill and the Indians. A Wedding, which directly followed Three Women, was skillful but rather pedestrian and ordinary, and a long dry period followed.
I was in film school at USC during the 1976-78 period, and several of the professors at that industry-oriented school were openly contemptuous of Altman: “He lets actors improvise… He’s being irresponsible with other people’s money.” That he could make a wide-ranging masterpiece like Nashville for slightly over $2-million meant nothing to them. Since M*A*S*H was the only big money-maker he ever directed, the studios never really respected him. And that may be a clue to the lack of imitators.
Article comments
1 - Pat Evans
"Nashville" is the one Altman film that I can watch time and again and still find something new. However I like your point that the movie is really set in Altmanville, like all of his films.
2 - tink
Very well thought out piece.
An interesting aside, Mr. Altman makes a brief appearance in the new Johnny Cash video for "God's Gonna Cut You Down."
3 - Lisa McKay
Congratulations -- this article has been chosen as an editor's pick this week!