ALTMAN-esque
films by Robert Altman
When Robert Altman died in November 2006 at the age of 81, film lovers lost one of the most influential and well-respected directors of modern cinema. Altman received an Academy Honorary Award in 2006 from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science “to honor a career that has repeatedly reinvented the art form and inspired filmmakers and audiences alike.” His films MASH and Nashville have been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Beginning May 4, the Music Box Theatre will be presenting some of the director’s best known films. A total of eleven films will be shown, and many will be new or archival 35mm prints.
Mccabe and Mrs. Miller
May 4 5:00, 7:20, 9:40
Robert Altman's haunting, poetic anti-Western is a deeply moving film about love and the pursuit of wealth in 19th-century America. McCabe (Warren Beatty), a businessman with a mysterious past, settles in the small Northwestern town and opens up a saloon. Soon after, an Englishwoman (Julie Christie), arrives and forms a partnership with McCabe. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond provides the faded imagery and Leonard Cohen provides the melancholy soundtrack. (1971, 120m)
Nashville
May 6 2:00, 5:00, 8:00
New 35mm Print
Robert Altman's brilliant, sprawling masterpiece paints a detailed portrait of the people and music industry of Nashville, Tennessee. Altman's roaming camera follows a group of disparate individuals as the city prepares for an upcoming political rally for "Replacement" party candidate Hal Philip Walker. The characters intersect at the beginning of the film after a highway accident, and again at the end. (1975, 159m)
Brewster McCloud
May 7 5:20, 9:40 | May 12 & 13 11:30am
Robert Altman's zany comedy is about a young man who is training to fly like a bird. Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) lives in the Houston Astrodome, where he spends his days building a winged contraption under the guidance of Louise (Sally Kellerman), a mysterious guardian angel. (1970, 105m)
M*A*S*H*
May 7 7:20
Archive Print
With the release of Robert Altman's M*A*S*H in 1970, a new form of comedy was born, resulting in one of the biggest box office smashes of its time. Based on the novel by Richard Hooker, M*A*S*H follows a group of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital officers as they perform surgery and pass the time just miles from the front lines of the Korean conflict. (1070, 112m)
Thieves Like Us
May 8 5:00 | June 2 & 3 11:30am
Robert Altman's remake of Nicholas Ray's THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (itself a 1949 adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel) is an authentic, understated drama that is as much a love story as it is a gangster picture. Taking place in the South during the Depression, the film follows the exploits of three recent prison escapees who become wanted after a string of bank robberies. (1974, 123m)
Short Cuts
May 8 7:20
Using the short stories of Raymond Carver as a jumping-off point, American maverick director Robert Altman weaves a tapestry of interlocking tales set against the seedy backdrop of contemporary middle-class Los Angeles. Tracking the various stages of denial, rage, and despair in the lives of several couples, Altman reveals their common threads of family dysfunction and marital discord in the unforgiving glare of the Southern California sunlight. (1993, 187m)
California Split
May 9 5:10 & 9:45 | June 9 & 10 11:30am
Robert Altman's masterful 1974 study of the psychology of the compulsive gambler. Elliott Gould, loose, jocular, and playful, and George Segal, neurotic, driven, and desperate, are really two halves of the same personality as they move from bet to bet, game to game, until they arrive for the big showdown in Reno. As in all Altman films, winning is losing; and the more Altman reveals, in his oblique, seemingly casual yet brilliantly controlled way, the more we realize that to love characters the way Altman loves his, you have to see them turned completely inside out.- Chicago Reader (1974, 108m)
3 Women
May 9 7:20
Archive Print
Robert Altman delivers one of his most startlingly enigmatic pictures with 3 WOMEN. Inspired by a dream Altman had in which he was shooting a film in the desert, the film tells the story of a shy, quiet girl named Pinky (Sissy Spacek), who starts working in a nursing home and strikes up a friendship with the talkative Millie (Shelley Duvall). The pair share an apartment and grow closer together, but a series of strange events cause their personas to change and morph in unexpected ways. Recalling the dreamy atmosphere of Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA, 3 WOMEN is Altman at his most deliriously inspired. (1977, 124m)
The Long Goodbye
May 10 5:10 & 9:40 | May 26 & 27 11:30am
Robert Altman, famous for his ability to turn any genre inside out, takes aim at film noir with this evocative adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel. Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is an unsuccessful private eye living and working in 1970s Los Angeles. This time around, Marlowe decides to investigate the supposed suicide of his friend (Jim Bouton). Altman's particular brand of filmmaking hits stride with this brilliant revisionist noir thriller photographed by the great Vilmos Zsigmond. (1973, 112m)
A Wedding
May 10 7:20
This bitter, busy comedy of manners may be the quintessential Altman film: a huge ensemble (something like 50 characters) gathered for an event that both is and isn't the point of the movie. You find yourself confused, amused, moved and shaken, but by the end your perception of the world is likely to be permanently altered.- A.O. Scott, New York Times (1978, 125m)
The Player
May 19 & 20 11:30am
Robert Altman's vicious satire gives the director a chance to address his greatest nemesis: the Hollywood studio system. Disguised as a thriller, the film assembles many famous actors to create an exhilarating blend of real life and fiction. Tim Robbins plays Griffin Mill, a studio executive who begins to fear for his job when an upstart (Peter Gallagher) becomes a hot topic on the lot. (1992, 124m)