Remembering Robert Altman - Page 2

Where did that unique ‘70s Altman style come from? Nothing before M*A*S*H had prepared anyone for it. Howard Hawks had successfully used overlapping dialogue in several great films of the thirties and forties, and there is some of that spirit in Altman, combined with a hippie/antiwar/anti-establishment attitude. There’s also a lyricism that balances the hard satire. This is especially apparent in McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Then there is the unique visual beauty of the films, the wide, wide Panavision images with their slow glides and zooms. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography in both The Long Goodbye and McCabe provides some of the most innovative visual highlights of that decade.

The use of music is also enormously creative. Nothing could complement McCabe & Mrs. Miller better than Leonard Cohen’s songs. John Williams creates brilliant and amusing variations on the title song of The Long Goodbye to accompany different scenes and moods. The actors created their own songs in Nashville, and while any country music fan will tell you those songs weren’t genuinely country, several of them serve beautifully to expand on the characters and situations in the film.

Last but far from least are the actors. Actors loved Altman and lined up to work with him. The results of the improvisations could be variable, but when they worked, amazing performances could happen: Elliot Gould in M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye and California Split; Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller; Lily Tomlin, Ronee Blakley, Henry Gibson, Geraldine Chaplin, and several others in Nashville; Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek in Three Women.

Of the movies that came later, everyone has a few favorites, but not many would argue that the work comes close to that first flowering (made mostly when Altman was in his mid- to late-forties). I like best among them Vincent and Theo (1990), a marvelous biography of Van Gogh that too few have seen, and the smashing entertainment Gosford Park (2001). Perhaps I need to see The Player (1992) again, since I notice it turns up on nearly everyone’s list of favorites. My impression at the time was that it was pretty good but was being overrated because of critics’ affection for the director.

Article Author: Randall A Byrn

Handyguy (aka Randall Byrn) is a marketing professional in New York. A transplanted Southerner, he has been a movie buff since birth. He's always secretly wanted to be Pauline Kael, and Blogcritics gives him an approximation of that, or so he likes to fantasize at least. …

Visit Randall A Byrn's author page — Randall A Byrn's Blog