Altman, Robert (1925—)

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Altman, Robert (1925—)

Considered to be the most prolific, if not the most influential film maker of the New Hollywood Cinema of the early 1970s, writer/producer/director Robert Altman made 13 films throughout the decade, including the Oscar-nominated hits M*A*S*H in 1970 and Nashville in 1975. His challenging and often idiosyncratic work dealt with genre, women's issues, male bonding, and institutions, and his movies always met with mixed critical and popular response. As critic Michael Wilmington observed, "In the opinion of some, Altman is one of America's greatest moviemakers, a fountain of creativity and iconoclasm. For others, he is a troublemaker and a guy who won't get with the program: defiant, rebellious and unpleasantly unpredictable."

This reputation—which has often alienated studios and irritated the public—is largely the result of Altman's unusual style, which he refers to as "controlled chaos." The epitome of a maverick filmmaker, Altman essentially uses his script as a blueprint from which he freely improvises, tending to value moments of insight, mood, and character revelation over action and plot. Form then follows content, resulting in his trademark tendency to record his improvisations in wide angle shots with casual tracking movements and zooms—sometimes from the perspective of multiple cameras—to capture spontaneous moments. He also has consistently favored the usage of overlapping and often improvised dialogue (which grew more controlled once his Lions Gate studio developed an eight-track sound system that revolutionized film sound). Such treatment results in long and rambling narratives, which connect and communicate only over time through the interweaving of fragments of character—somewhat like a jigsaw puzzle or jazz riffs. As critic Henri Bohar observed of Altman's Kansas City (1996), "Altman weaves several stories, and several moods, fleshing out a film script as if it were a score and the actors instruments." While such a style has proven challenging to impatient, narrative-driven audiences, Altman contends, "We are trying to educate and develop our audiences."

Far older than most of the rising film school-trained directors of the early 1970s, Altman began his film career upon his discharge from the military, making industrials for an independent company in the 1950s. Altman left when Alfred Hitchcock offered him the chance to direct his weekly television show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Work in series television and the occasional low budget feature (The Delinquents in 1957, starring Tom Laughlin, and later the famed Billy Jack) continued until he was asked to direct a script turned down by most of Hollywood. It was not only the extensive black humor and anti-war sentiments in M*A*S*H that attracted him; Altman knew that this was his opportunity to break into commercial filmmaking. The loosely woven story about Korean War doctors struggling to stay sane through a series of games and practical jokes was both a critical and commercial success—receiving the Grand Prize at Cannes, and Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director—appealing to the more cynical and jaded audiences, who could identify with these characters worn down by years of war and political assassination.

But it was his next film, Nashville (1975), that came to be considered Altman's masterpiece. Dubbed a "spiritual disaster movie" by influential critic Robin Wood, this tapestry of 1970s culture interweaves the institutions of politics and country music as it focuses on the lives of 24 characters seeking celebrity status during a five-day period prior to a presidential rally. Nashville was lauded as Best Film by the National Society of Film Critics, the New York Film Critics Circle, and the National Board of Review. Of this work, historian David Cook concluded, Altman "has seen us with our raw nerves exposed at a time in American history when the conflicting demands of community and individual freedom have never been more extreme, and he has become an epic poet of that conflict."

However, as the 1970s wore on, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, cynicism gave way to the new optimism of the Bicentennial years, and Altman's later explorations of bizarre characters who are driven by American values only to suffer confusion, disillusionment, and often complete breakdowns grated on audiences seeking the upbeat in films such as Rocky and Star Wars. In the wake of the steadily decreasing box office draw of such flops as Quintet and A Perfect Couple (both 1979), critic Pauline Kael wryly observed, "Altman has reached the point of wearing his failures like medals. He's creating a mystique of heroism out of emptied theaters."

However, it was the mediocre box office returns of the big budget live-action cartoon Popeye (1980) that finally signaled Altman's inability to finance future products. He diverted himself by producing opera and stage productions in Europe that were transferred to video (Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, 1982, and Streamers, 1984), as well as working in television (The Dumb Waiter, 1987; Tanner 88, 1988). But in the early 1990s, he returned to form with The Player. This critical and financial success was ironically a scathing satirical indictment of the struggles Altman had undergone while working in Hollywood. This led to another well-received tapestry film, Short Cuts (1993) based on the short stories of Raymond Carver. Both films won major awards at Cannes and netted Altman Academy Award Nominations for Best Director, and Short Cuts also won Best Adapted Screenplay.

In the late 1990s, Altman divided his time between occasional television work (the anthology series Gun) and film projects, but continued to struggle with studio anxiety over his unconventional methods.

—Rick Moody