1973 - THE LONG GOODBYE, Altman does Chandler

Quirky and mostly noncommercial director Robert Altman takes on the detective genre.  Altman was always game to try something different, so why not a Raymond Chandler mystery set in Los Angeles. Altman and his screenwriter Leigh Brackett updated the Chandler novel from the 1940's to the 1970's but kept Philip Marlowe as a more of a 1940's character rather than a contemporary private detective.

As always with Altman there was the usual cast of his favorite characters, Elliot Gould, Henry Gibson, Nina Van Pallandt and in a rather small part, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The director Mark Rydell played a very scary crime boss named Marty Augustine and Sterling Hayden an interesting actor was cast as an alcoholic writer which was apparently typecasting when it came to him.

The screenwriter Leigh Brackett had started her career working for Howard Hawks on 1946's The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe.  Brackett had been around quite a while but apparently she got along very well with Altman. 

This is a typical Robert Altman film with lots of improvisation, his famous multilayered dialog, an interesting visual style from the cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and music from mister Star Wars composer himself John Williams One of the best jokes in the film is the title song constantly repeating itself in different versions throughout the film.

 

This is one of Altman's best films.  The mystery is actually fairly easy to follow as long as you pay attention to the overlapping dialog in the soundtrack and it's probably as authentic a picture of 1970's Los Angeles that you are going to get.  But as usual with an Altman film it was a commercial failure. With the exception of MASH, Altman was never a guy you could count on to for a money making feature film.

The running time is 112 minutes.

1976 - BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS OR SITTING BULLS HISTORY LESSON, Robert Altman

Critics didn't particularly care for this film when it was released.  Since it was a Robert Altman film you could be sure that the thing was dead commercially.  Still, it's an interesting film.

Altman's take on Buffalo Bill is probably a little obvious.  Buffalo Bill is a braggart, conman and an honest to goodness American celebrity in this country's best tradition.  Bill is running a wild west show that portrays the exploits of White Americans in a heroic manner.  Never mind that the white culture  was responsible for the eradication of almost all of the Native American population during America's pursuit of Manifest Destiny.

As usual with an Altman film there is a large cast.  Paul Newman as Buffalo Bill is at the center of the film. However when it comes to an Altman film it's the fringes that are also interesting.  One of Altman's  skills as a director is moving actors around in an improvisational manner.  The production looks great. The cinematography by Paul Lohmann really captures the Wild West Show and the surrounding Alberta, Canada area where it was shot.  Final thought, I enjoyed this film a lot.

 

Altman wrote the screenplay along with Alan Rudolph.

Running time 123 minutes.

2003 - THE COMPANY, the flip side to The Red Shoes

The Company was made late in the career of Robert Altman.  The film was a passion project for the actor Neve Campbell since she has a producer and story credit on the film.

Altman was apparently reluctant to take on the film but it has a lot of his qualities.  The film follows a dance company for about a year in Chicago.  It is virtually a plot less film.  Although Neve Campbell and James Franco are in the main credits, if there is a main character at all its Malcolm McDowell playing "Mr. A,"  the director of the dance group.   McDowell is the complete opposite of the Lermontov character from The Red Shoes. Although focused, he's not going to drive has principal ballerina into suicide.

In fact the Neve Campbell character "Ry" is almost the complete opposite of Victoria Page the ballerina from the The Red Shoes.  She works as a cocktail waitress and actually gets hurt dancing

 This is an interesting, movie but it's lack of a story probably hurt any chance of commercial success.  I would still rate this as a very good late career film from Robert Altman.

 

Barbara Turner and Neve Campbell get story credit, the screenplay was written by Turner.

112 minutes.

1974 - THIEVES LIKE US, boring make that very boring Robert Altman film

This is the kind of self indulgent film that really hurt Robert Altman's career not that he would probably have cared very much.  This is a love story/crime drama set in the rural south.  Thieves Like Us is almost the antithesis of Bonnie and Clyde. 

Altman lingers on the atmosphere and the character touches throughout the film at the complete expense of audience involvement.  There is just absolutely no way you can get interested in these stupid rural redneck characters must less stay awake watching them which was a major challenge by the way.

As for the cast, were there ever less charismatic romantic leads than Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall?  At least Bonnie and Clyde had Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to engage the audience.  Between the mumbling of Carradine and Duvall and Altman's notorious manipulation of the film's soundtrack with his multi channel mix it's almost impossible to hear the dialog.  Well at least the film looks kind of cool particularly with some soft dreamy long shots at the beginning of the film.

However films like this pass their phony indulgence as "Art" at the expense of the viewer.

The screenplay is by Joan Tewkesbury, Calder Willingham and Robert Altman, the running time is 123 minutes.

1980 - POPEYE, the unmusical

UNFLIPPING BELIEVABLE.  Robert Altman directs, Robert Evans produces and apparently the coke, pot and booze flowed freely during the making of this film.  The result unsurprisingly is a horrible film watching experience.

 

Anyone who says this film is some sort of undiscovered or unappreciated classic has clearly not watched it lately.  Between the muttering and terrible Robert Williams and the horrible musical numbers this viewer can only wonder what the heads of the Paramount and Disney studios who financed this thing must have thought watching this nightmare during the dailies if they even watched the dailies.

 

Complete garbage, not even worthy of a discussion.

114 minutes, written by Jules Feiffer who should have really known better.

1970 - BREWSTER MCCLOUD, is Robert Altman strangeness

Brewster McCloud builds wings and wants to fly around the Houston Astrodome in Robert Altman's weird allegory about who knows what exactly.  This film has so many shifts in tone, you better be a very talented guy to pull this off.  Altman almost succeeds but in the end the story is beyond his grasp.

There are plenty of funny bits throughout the film with spoofs of Steve McQueen's Bullitt detective, to Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz in some sort of oddball part singing the "Star Spangled Banner"  Altman also has lots of throwaway jokes scattered all over the film which were probably improvised during the shooting

What does it add up to?  I don't think even Altman ever knew.  After throwing in lots of little jokes about birds, high speed car chases and oddball character touches, he starts killing off his actors with some sort of "Angel of Death" played by Sally Kellerman.

In the end I suspect Brewster McCloud was Altman's way of seeing how much he could get away with in a studio financed film.  Robert Altman made so much money with MASH for 20th Century Fox, MGM probably thought he could work a similar money making miracle for them with his hipster sensibility.  They were in for a big surprise.

105 minutes, written by Doran William Cannon.

1977 - THREE WOMEN, Altman does Bergman

Three Women, is a pretentious male director with artistic ambitions attempting to make a film about women's psyches in the manner of Ingmar Bergman's Persona.

Robert Altman, supposedly based this film on a dream that he had which he then turned into a screenplay and it sure seems like it.  Altman appears to be making it up as he goes along using Persona as his guide.  Altman's best films are satires particularly on American life.  This is probably the best part in the film, poking fun at Shelly Duvall's shallow character Millie Lammoreaux.  A woman who's non stop prater about almost any subject makes her the shallowest of the shallow.
 
Where Altman belly flops is when he starts to get all surreal.  Again, obviously influenced by Bergman, he has the women's personalities merge and exchange with each other.  It sounds more interesting than it actually is.  Bergman can pull off something like this because he clearly knows where he wants to go in Persona.  He is examining aspects of a woman's personalty using a distancing technique in the filmmaking.

 Altman for all his arty shots of water and weird murals seems to be fumbling his way through his inconclusive ending where it appears the Three Women have exchanged roles as parent, sibling and some kind of earth mother type.

The acting is variable, Shelly Duvall is very good in the film.  Altman had recognized early in her career that she was an extremely talented performer and used her in many of his films.  Sissy Spacek, does her child/woman acting thing that she had previously used in Badlands and Carrie and doesn't really bring anything interesting to her part. Janice Rule is third billed in the film, but she has a  nothing part.

I saw Three Women the week after the first Star Wars had been released, there were about three other people in the theater.  Star Wars pretty much doomed this type of art film from occasionally being made in American studios into extinction.

124 minutes, written by Robert Altman.

1975 - NASHVILLE, not to use the term lightly, a masterpiece.

I saw Robert Altman's Nashville when it first came out in 1975 and at the time I felt it was not a middle America I even recognized, I did not care for the film.  Watching this film again over 30 years later, I now realize that Altman has captured a portrait of middle America that is spot on.

From the campaign of "The Replacement Party" candidate for president Hall Phillip Walker spouting inflammatory political rhetoric to it's portrait of clueless empty headed fame seeking individuals crooning their mediocre country songs, Nashville presents a portrait of middle class white people that is uncomfortable to watch.

Altman managed a cast of 24 actors and there isn't a misstep in characterization or performance from any of them.  They are perfectly integrated into the story.  My only complaint is that perhaps there are maybe a couple of extra performances of country songs than are really necessary to the story.
This is probably the best of Altman's ensemble pieces and it seems more than just a satire of the United States, but an actual documentary record of it.  A film classic.

160 minutes, written by Joan Tewkesbury although clearly a lot of it was improvised.

1980 - HEALTH, satire from Robert Altman about 1970's politics.

When Robert Altman died everyone trotted out the usual films in tribute, MASH, Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller, A Prairie Home Companion.  However there wasn't a whole lot mentioned about his late 1970's losers like, A Wedding, Images, Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's History Lesson, Quintet, A Perfect Couple and HealtH.

HealtH, deals with a health food convention at a Florida hotel where two batty women are running for the presidency of the organization.  The film features plenty of goofy characters running around in   fresh fruit and vegetable costumes and is filmed in the improvisational style that Altman had the corner on for many years but was really death to his films.  The parallels to a political convention are immediately obvious with the the film clearly commenting on this country's election process.

Altman had a good group of actors for this film, James Garner and Carol Burnett, who you wouldn't think would be entirely comfortable with this kind of comedy style are very funny.  Garner is a cigarette smoking campaign manager for Lauren Bacall a health food nutcase.  Carol Burnett a comedian probably best watched in small doses is an advisor to the President of the United States who specializes in protein.  Burnett gets horny whenever she gets nervous and in spite of that silliness she's pretty funny.

Altman with his cast

For yet another plot less Robert Altman film HealtH is funny, the satire is fairly obvious, but if you can get into the Altman sense of humor this is a pretty good time.  I would certainly rate it over Nashville which always seemed extremely overrated and way too long.

105 minutes, written by Frank Barhydt, Robert Altman and Paul Dooley.