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Selected Altman Filmography
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M*A*S*H* (1970)
Brewster McCloud (1970)
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Thieves Like Us (1974)
California Split (1974) |
Nashville (1975)
Three Women (1977)
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Popeye (1980)
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
Vincent & Theo (1990)
The Player (1992)
Short Cuts (1993)
Pret-a-Porter (1994)
Kansas City (1996)
Cookie's Fortune (1999)
Dr T and the Women (2000)
Gosford Park (2001)
The Company(2003)
A Prairie Home Companion (2006) |
Robert Altman's Best
A look back at the late auteur's 10 greatest films on DVD.
By Glenn Kenny
ROBERT ALTMAN
1925-2006.
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It's hard to think of a director who had a more bizarrely varied career than the late Robert Altman, who died on November 20 at age 81. It's interesting to contemplate that only a few years separate one of his most blatantly and perversely anarchic films, 1987's proto-Bill-and-Ted suburban-teens-in-mischief picture O.C. and Stiggs, and one of his most wrenching, reflective films about creation and destruction, 1990's Vincent and Theo. (One is reminded of Luis Bunuel's filmmaking in Mexico in the '50s, dotted with masterpieces and oddities that all somehow bore the master's signature.) Another fascinating aspect of Altman is that while everybody knows he was a major filmmaker, the conventional wisdom on his works is hardly monolithic, which is to say it hardly exists at all. Hence, any attempt at a consumer-guide-type best-of summation will by definition be highly subjective. In my case, I'm in the minority on two Altman pictures that have garnered a lot of praise — 1993's Short Cuts and 2001's Gosford Park. I will say here that Altman's passing will likely motivate my revisiting Short Cuts in its excellent Criterion Collection DVD edition, but I'm well and truly done with Park. Below are ten pictures I think of when I think of Altman's best, all available on DVD. Following that, the Altman eccentricities I'm fondest of, and a plea for a DVD release of one of his most divisive films. — Glenn Kenny
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971, Warner DVD): One of Altman's most elegiac, mordantly humorous, and visually beautiful films, featuring outstanding performances by Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, and the entire ensemble. A pitch-perfect, inexhaustible work.
Nashville (1975, Paramount DVD): A fantasy, really, as its largely cast-composed music testifies — these songs bore no resemblance to what was coming out of Music City in 1975. But a potent, lively, sometimes riotously funny, and sometimes deeply upsetting fantasy that scores some very real points about America.
The Long Goodbye (1973, MGM DVD): Altman updates Chandler, with hip but ultimately sadsack Elliot Gould doing Phillip Marlowe; a funny poison valentine to L.A. and ultimately a work of tragic irony.
M*A*S*H (1970, Fox DVD): Altman's breakthrough film, a very freewheeling, often anachronistic Korean War-set satire. Those who only know the TV series will be perhaps shocked to see what pricks Hawkeye and Trapper John (Donald Sutherland and Gould in the roles that made them stars) are here, not to mention the truly unhinged stylings of Robert Duvall as holy roller Frank Burns. Read the review of M*A*S*H on DVD.
California Split (1974, Sony DVD): A couple of typically Altmanesque screwups (George Segal and Gould) on a gambling tear. Despite its chaos — it is with this picture that Altman really dug deep into multi-channel sound and overlapping dialogue — it offers uncomfortably acute instances of the madness of putting everything on the line.
Three Women (1977, Criterion DVD): The most emotionally wrenching and visually arresting of the enigmatic curveballs Altman pitched at the industry and audiences every now and again; a real trip with incredible work by Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule as the titular trio.
Popeye (1980, Paramount DVD): A most peculiar musical (songs by Harry Nillson, one of which, "He Needed Me," recurs in Altman devotee and friend Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love), a most peculiar comic adaptation, and surely a most peculiar kid's movie. Altman's vision of the Thimble Theater is consistent and singular and has a winning absurdism.
Secret Honor (1984, Criterion DVD): Future P.T. Anderson stalwart Philip Baker Hall is a startling Nixon in this one-character paranoia-fest, a satire that cuts to the bone.
Vincent and Theo (1990, MGM DVD): An unsentimental and sometimes emotionally brutal examination of artist Vincent van Gogh's relationship with his brother; Tim Roth and Paul Rhys are remarkable as the siblings.
A Wedding (1978, Fox DVD): One of Altman's big, single-themed ensemble pieces of the '70s-'80s (see also Health); this is more slight and facetious than Nashville (it would have to be, one supposes), but brimming with tart fun.
I'm weirdly partial to some of Altman's more off-the-wall efforts, like the Bergman-meets-The Twilight Zone love triangle Images (1972, MGM DVD), and the very slow-moving — glacial, one might say — sci-fi effort Quintet (1978, Fox DVD). His Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976, MGM DVD) is underrated, as is his grim, jazz-enlivened period piece Kansas City (1996, New Line). Sadly missing from DVD is 1974's Thieves Like Us, as unforgettable a depiction of the Depression dust bowl as McCabe is of the 19th-century Northwest; and the you'll-believe-a-man-can-fly comedy Brewster McCloud (1970), a real love-it-or-hate-it proposition.
RELATED LINK: The Premiere.com news item on Altman's passing.
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