I enjoyed his tv work, Combat! is quite good. You can still catch re runs of various tv shows he did on late night cable.
All his films are worth seeing — even the less-successful ones like HEALTH, A Perfect Couple and Quintet.
The Long Goodbye
McCabe & Mrs, Miller
Three Women
California Split
Thieves Like Us
I lke everything he did, to some extent. His movies were always creative and fun to watch. And Vilmos Zsigmond and he as a team, wow.
Dr. T and the Women had clever visual puns and a woman giving real childbirth, and that’s one of his least well-regarded films.
gremlins – double post
Bump.
Robert Altman is one of the finest filmmakers this country has ever produced.
troll
>>All his films are worth seeing — even the less-successful ones like HEALTH, A Perfect Couple and Quintet.<<
Sometimes I think the less successful ones are even more worth seeing. He admitted evry film was a kind of experiment & he encouraged his performers to improvise, so it stands to reason that not every film was going to be an unqualified success. But even the “flops” are so richly textured and densely inter-plotted that I fi9nd them fascinating.
I just tried to watch “Fool for Love” the other night. It could not hold my attention.
I admire Sam Shepherd. I’ve seen a number of his plays staged and found most of them captivating, e.g. “Buried Child”, “True West”. I think that Altman “opened up” the play, to a small degree, by presenting us with the entire motel/restaurant establishment in the middle of nowhere. He shot lingering scenes of the Shepherd’s character in his truck, approaching the motel and then driving off. This sequence at the beginning of the film occupies about 3 minutes or so and there’s no dialogue. Later scenes of the characters strolling across the property from restaurant to motel, again without dialogue, slowed the narrative. Shots of Harry Dean Stanton and the little girl just observing were also less-than-pregnant.Eventually, I gave up and turned it off after probably an hour. It’s the worst Altman film I’ve encountered. I’ll watch “Jimmy Dean” and “Secret Honor” — two more of his stage adaptations — and see how he does with those “experiments”.
I’ve not seen all of his work but I have enjoyed almost everything I have seen:
Short Cuts
The Player
OC & Stiggs (really enjoyed the National Lampoon story but didn’t get into the movie)
Popeye
Nashville
M*A*S*H
My favorite is M*A*S*H. An anti-war movie that doesn’t preach. Popeye is a so much fun to watch. He couldn’t have found a better Popeye than Robin Williams and Shelly Duvall was born to play Olive Oyl. Her rendition of “He Needs Me” is priceless. And I got to enjoy it all over again in Punch Drunk Love.
I’ll be getting 3 Women for Christmas and both The Long Goodbye and McCabe & Mrs. Miller are on my must see list.
I love McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Long Goodbye, and California Split. I like everything I’ve seen of his.
I love Altman to pieces, and I tend to love him even when others don’t. (“Dr. T & the Women,” for example, I thought was a perfectly decent film, but it seems to be more than a little reviled, as Banal1 pointed out. That said, I had a lot of problems with “3 Women,” which is one of his most celebrated. I liked it insofar as it fits very nicely alongside Bergman’s “Persona” and Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.,” but really I thought Altman was just out of his element with the surrealism.)
My personal favorite of his is “A Prairie Home Companion.” It’s so beautifully elegaic, so quietly unambitious and yet powerful. I suppose it adds something to the experience both that it was his last film and that I’m a big fan of Garrison Keillor.
I think “Nashville” is maybe Altman’s best film, though, and it’s definitely the one I enjoy the most aesthetically (as opposed to my more visceral reaction to “A Prairie Home Companion”).
I enjoy the hell out of “The Player” and “Gosford Park,” which are just too fun for words.
In order:
“Nashville”/“A Prairie Home Companion”
“Gosford Park”
“The Player”
“A Wedding”
“M*A*S*H”
“Dr. T & the Women”
“Cookie’s Fortune”
“The Company”
“Secret Honor”
“Short Cuts”
(Geez, I’ve seen fewer than I thought. I obviously need to play catch-up.)
Man, I envy those of you who haven’t seen The Long Goodbye. I’d give my right foot to experience that movie for the first time again.
Top Five Altman:
1) NASHVILLE (at this point, my favorite film, period)
2) McCabe & Mrs. Miller
3) MASH
4) The Player
5) The Long Goodbye
Fredo said, “Robert Altman is one of the finest filmmakers this country has ever produced.” I can get behind that statement, but what’s the source of affection for Gingerbread Man? I thought that was a pretty terrible film (if I’m thinking of the right film. Is Duvall in that?).
But I do think Altman is an original and interesting director, if not entirely successful. I’d like to hear others talk about what makes him distinctive (what makes him auteur). There are a couple of things that come to mind.
First, I don’t know if this is a correct analogy, but I think his most interesting films employ a “cubist” approach. We see bits and pieces of characters and their conversations/situations and all of these together form a coherrent whole. I think Nashville is the best example of this, although it’s used in Short-Cuts and Gosford Park (both of which I enjoyed).
The other thing that I think of is the way he updated and expanded genre films—i.e. MASH (the war movie); McCabe and Mrs. Millers (the Western); *Popeye (musical), etc. I don’t know if that makes him an auteur, but it’s something he seemed interested in.
Let me throw out another issue. In the past several years there seems to have been an interest in films with a lot of characters and storylines that interweave together. I’m thinking of films like Magnolia, 13 Conversations About One Thing, Traffic, Babel (etc.) What is the connection between Altman’s style and these contemporary films, if any?
You know, I’ve thought a little bit about that. It’s always baffled me when critics compare “Magnolia,” for example, to an Altman film or describe it as Altmanesque. Other than the fact that its synopsis on paper strongly resembles “Short Cuts” (an ensemble piece about vaguely-related Los Angelenos!), I just cannot see the connection. The style of it — specifically, the nature of its being an ensemble piece — feels too fundamentally different to me.
That said, while “Magnolia” and, say, “Babel” are about very different things, I can see a stylistic relationship there — something about the nature of the melodrama. When I think of an Altman film, which by and large are ensemble pieces (or, at least, by and large are most famously ensemble pieces), it just has a very different tone to it. The camera is less controlling, more passive, as lives and dialogue and exchanges jumble around. Events unfold, or they don’t, and things happen, or they don’t, and then the movie ends.
I realize this is a mostly visceral reaction, since again, Altman cuts among [sometimes vaguely] interweaving storylines, just as the other ensemble directors do. It’s hard for me to pinpoint the distinction that I very strongly sense. Perhaps someone else with a stronger film vocabulary can help me out here.
Jazz – First let me address Altman to contemporary films like Magnolia and Babel. A lot of people talk about Altmanesque as being about multi-character, interweaving storylines. But if you look at his whole body of work (which is quite extensive), Robert Altman made a lot of films that weren’t like Nashville. To me, the term “Altmanesque” is much for specific to the style he employed and the things he was most interested in – behavior, breaking down genre conventions, experimenting with camera and tone and pacing, etc. etc. So I find it very hard to find a concrecte connection between Altman and Inniritu or PT Anderson.
As far as The Gingerbread Man, I don’t really know. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it and like I said, it was the first Altman film I saw in the theater and I was younger then. So quite likely if I were to see it again I might find fault with it. But from what I can recall, I thought it was a very moody, intricate, ploty film that had a really cool Southern vibe and Branaugh of course is great, as is Robert Duvall. But like I said, maybe it’s crap since I last saw it as a teenager.
I’m with you, Aiken. I only see a superficial connection between Altman and these other films/filmmakers. But like you I have a hard time articulating the difference. The way Altman interweaves the characters and storylines seems more abstract; he doesn’t seem to care as much about connecting the characters and storylines. (i.e. this storyline relates to this person from this storyline by…). The characters/storylines are more like shards that create a larger and complex mosaic. With the contemporary films, the stories and characters are more concrete and the connection with other characters/storylines is more overt.
Hmm, I’m not satisfied with this description, but it’s the best that I’ve got. Anyone else jump in and help us out anytime.
I’ve seen a couple more Altman films so this needs an update:
The Long Goodbye
3 Women
Short Cuts
A Prairie Home Companion
A Wedding
California Split
The Player
Gosford Park
Cookie’s Fortune
The Gingerbread Man
M*A*S*H
Nashville
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Rare Robert Altman, happy to find it :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKc2_Ico7w&feature=related
Ends up in terror like most Altman movies. Still remember Short Cuts unexpected chills.
That Psycho take 2 ending didn’t cut it for me. Fassbinder would have loved the subject and the characters better. He didn’t transform persons who were different in their lifestyle into monsters.
Altman has his flaws. Visually wonderful, already his own style so early, but…crap at understanding people perhaps ? There’s always something too obviously linked to horror genre in his take on sexual repression and introspection.
Nashville is a critic of hippie people. I love that side of it.
Rare Robert Altman, happy to find it :
That Cold Day in the Park (1969)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKc2_Ico7w&feature=related
Ends up in terror like most Altman movies. Still remember Short Cuts unexpected chills.
That Psycho take 2 ending didn’t cut it for me. Fassbinder would have loved the subject and the characters better. He didn’t transform persons who were different in their lifestyle into monsters.
Altman has his flaws. Visually wonderful, already his own style so early, but…crap at understanding people perhaps ? There’s always something too obviously linked to horror genre in his take on sexual repression and introspection.
Nashville is a critic of hippie people. I love that side of it.
“. I only see a superficial connection between Altman and these other films/filmmakers”
Magnolia is a lesser version of Short Cuts
Boogie Nights is a wanna be Altman film dealing with porn
and Punch Drunk Love was very inspired by the Popeye film (right down to the soundtrack, casting and incidental nature)
I haven’t seen too many of his movies, I’m focusing on Pedro Almodovar lately but I think I might focus on Altman next.
So far I loved McCabe & Mrs. Miller and 3 Women.
Really liked Short Cuts.
And thought Gosford Park was alright.
Um, yeah, Den is throwing some really unfounded hoo-ha two posts above me, and needs to watch those movies again, and whatever Altman he thinks he’s seen
The Player is my top pick for Altman, he was firing on all cylinders and the results were spectacular.
At the other end of the scale, Pret-a-porter was a disaster.
Nothing can touch NASHVILLE.
Just watched Mccabe and Mrs.Miller and it totally floored me. Not sure why but I feel like it would be impossible to make a film like that now…The beauty of it is really hypnotizing, especially with the Leonard Cohen songs.
MASH 9/10
McCabe and Mrs Miller 9/10
Images 10/10
The Long Goodbye 8/10
California Split 9/10
Nashville 10/10
3 Women 10/10
The Player 9/10
Short Cuts 9/10
Am I the only person who loves Popeye?
No.
Fredo
Robert Altman is an often misunderstood filmmaker who made both complex interconnected dramas and also introspective character pieces. His style of the roving camera, pop zooms, overlapping dialogue, and thinly veiled plots are off putting to a lot of people but I’ve come to really appreciate his perspective on filmmaking. One of the greatest quotes from Altman, which has always stuck with me is “I don’t know what I want but I’ll know it when I see it.” His films, whether good or bad, always had this quality of the search for what is interesting, an intrigue into the human condition and human behavior.
What are some of your favorite Altman films? While The Long Goodbye and Short Cuts are my two favorites, there have been a number of his films that have impressed me. 3 Women is fantastic and the Kenneth Branagh-starring The Gingerbread Man was the first Altman movie I saw in the theater and I hold particular affection for this film. And I think Prairie Home Companion was a great film to go out on.
Here is the films I’ve seen, in order:
The Long Goodbye
Short Cuts
3 Women
A Prairie Home Companion
The Player
Gosford Park
Cookie’s Fortune
The Gingerbread Man
M*A*S*H
Nashville
McCabe & Mrs. Miller