Images (1972)

"Altman's REPULSION?"

The extremely welcome UK Blu-ray release of some of director Robert Altman's earlier works continues. I've reviewed Eureka's disc of THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK (1969), and his 1973 version of THE LONG GOODBYE on here too. Arrow brought that out and now here they are again with IMAGES (1972), a film Altman has such difficulty raising the financing for that he eventually funded it himself.

Susannah York is Cathryn, a children's writer who spends her days scribbling tales of unicorns, mythical peoples and fantasy lands. Her non-writing life is a bit of a fantasy too, but of a far less pleasant kind, because even when we meet her Cathryn is fairly mad and by the end of the film she seems to be very mad indeed.

With life in town becoming too stressful, Cathryn convinces her husband Hugh (Rene Auberjonois) to take her to their house in the country, where she hopes to finish her latest book. Already bothered  by visions of lovers past, Cathryn begins to see herself from afar. But is Cathryn No.1 the real Cathryn, or Cathryn No.2? Are the men she talks to real or imagined? Alive or dead? And is she actually committing murders, or is it all in her head?

IMAGES is a film that's open to interpretation, which will delight as many as it will infuriate. (Actually I suspect it will infuriate more but they probably won't be getting this disc). Personally I like the idea that Cathryn has somehow 'slipped through time' and is actually experiencing different parts of her life all at once, and that is what ends up driving her insane. 

The act of seeing something 'second hand' is obviously important, as Altman fills his film with cameras, mirrors and other kinds of viewing equipment, presumably to emphasise that nothing we are seeing is necessarily reliable but might be inverted, filtered, or just generally altered from what is actually taking place. 

Arrow's Blu-ray comes with an appreciation by Stephen Thrower where he tells us a bit about the reception of the film when it was shown at Cannes (netting Susannah York the best actress award) and its subsequent fate. We get an archival Altman commentary track, plus a brand new one from Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan. There's also an Altman interview, a new interview with actress Cathryn Harrison, trailer, and that rather gorgeous cover art you can see up there.

The press release tells me the original negative of IMAGES was once rumoured to have been burned by Columbia Pictures. Certainly other 1970s films have suffered worse fates (THE WICKER MAN becoming part of the foundations of the M3 being one), but it's a relief to see that this isn't the case. Arrow's 4k scan is terrific, making this an essential addition to your Altman library. 

Arrow Academy are bringing out Robert Altman's IMAGES on 
Blu-ray on Monday 19th March 2018

That Cold Day in the Park (1969)

“Robert Altman’s Psychological Gothic Thriller”

The film Robert Altman made before M*A*S*H (and if the producers had seen it they wouldn’t have employed him to direct it, apparently) gets a dual format UK release courtesy of Eureka.

Young, wealthy, intolerably lonely Frances Austen (Sandy Dennis) lives in an elegant apartment in Vancouver. Her only friends are those she has inherited from her mother. They all resemble Pete Walker types who probably beat misbehaving servants or eat people who come to have their fortunes told when they’re not round at Frances’ house having quail and sherry prepared by her own housekeeping staff.

After one such dinner party, and during a terrible storm, Frances looks out through the window and sees a young man getting drenched on a park bench. She invites him inside and thus begins Altman’s increasingly claustrophobic and disturbing psycho thriller.

The young man (David Burns) initially pretends to be mute as she offers him food, a bath, breakfast the next day and buys him new clothes. The fact she locks his bedroom door at night doesn’t stop him leaving through the window to visit his family during an impressive crane shot that might have inspired Argento’s even more ambitious use of a similar piece of equipment in TENEBRAE.

It doesn’t stop him coming back to take advantage of all the free things, either.  In this respect he becomes horror’s typical victim - the one we know shouldn’t go into the dark cellar or the forest at midnight. The only darkness here is inside Frances’ mind, but it’s quite scary enough as we witness her visit to a gynaecologist to obtain contraception for her planned first sexual experience with her prisoner. Eventually she discovers how he gets out and locks the place down. She goes to bizarre extremes to ‘please’ him, which of course misfire completely, until we reach a final shot that’s an absolute cracker and I’m not going to spoil it for you.

Considered Altman’s first movie as an auteur, THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK certainly possesses stylistic elements that follow through his subsequent work. Even if you’re not familiar with it, though, there’s plenty to be appreciated in Altman’s portrayal of a woman who, because of her stifling existence, is ‘not quite right’. The viewer is encouraged to feel distanced from her by numerous devices (viewing her through grills, glass, and lots of mirrors) and the camera often skulks off in a corner as we spy on the interaction of the two leads. 

Eureka’s disc also contains a half-hour interview with David Thompson, author of Altman on Altman. He contextualises the movie within Altman’s career and gives an excellent potted history of how the film came to be made. I’m going to own up now to never having heard of THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK before, but Eureka’s calling it a ‘psychological gothic thriller’ piqued my interest. It certainly is that, with excellent performances, drifting zooms and crisp photography from Laszlo Kovacs, Altman’s film gives us a slow and steady crescendo into insanity that, by the climax, stifles the viewer as much as Frances Austen has been stifled by her entire life. 

Eureka are releasing Robert Altman's THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK in a dual format DVD & Blu-ray set on Monday 20th of June 2016

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation (from a screenplay by Leigh Brackett) of the Raymond Chandler novel gets the Blu-ray treatment courtesy of the Arrow Academy label. And what a lovely package it is.

Elliott Gould plays chain-smoking private investigator Phillip Marlowe, living in a tiny turret flat in Los Angeles accessed by a private elevator and next door to a house filled with topless young lady hippies, His only friends are his cat who only likes one specific type of tinned food (some of the best cat acting I’ve seen in a long time, by the way) and Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton). When Lennox asks Marlowe for a one-way lift to Tijuana it’s the start of a complex story that kicks off with the police pulling the detective for questioning after Lennox’s wife is found with her skull beaten in. Lennox is subsequently found to have committed suicide and the case is apparently closed. However, a request from pretty Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt who went on to do not much else of significance but did appear in Albert Pyun’s THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER) for Marlowe to locate her missing husband Roger (the ever-bonkers Sterling Hayden from DR STRANGELOVE, THE FINAL PROGRAMME and DEADLY STRANGERS) proves to be more complicated than he expects, especially when gang boss Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell who directed ON GOLDEN POND) turns up demanding the $350 000 Marlowe owes him.

Probably the most noir a 1970s thriller set in Los Angeles could be, Robert Altman’s film gives us a cynical view of both the city in which it is set, and the people who live there. This is a crumbling, tarnished depiction of LA, where hedonism feels tired and few question the casual violence of organised crime. Holding everything together is a bravura performance by Gould, who manages to tiptoe just the right side of rumpled seediness to be likeable. Altman’s direction gives rise to a whole host of interesting camera setups, many of which show a considerable wit at work. Many of the dialogue scenes, especially near the beginning, feel improvised, and John Williams supplies a curiously experimental music score which consists solely of the title theme but interpreted in many different ways (some cleverly segueing into one another during scene changes).

Arrow's widescreen 2.35:1 presentation is very nice, with the only blemish being some kind of hole in the top right of the print that occurs at 1:14 and is present as a distracting white dot for about a minute. Otherwise it looks great. 

There are loads of extras, including material ported over from the 2002 DVD release. These include interviews with Robert Altman, Elliott Gould, and director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond. There’s also ‘Giggle and Give In’ - Paul Joyce’s documentary on Altman, Elliott Gould discussing the film on stage, Maxim Jakubowski on Hard Boiled fiction, David Thompson on Robert Altman, Tom Williams on Raymond Chandler, a trailer, radio spots, a reversible sleeve and a booklet. All in all it’s a very fine presentation of a very fine film.

Arrow will be releasing Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE on Blu-ray on the Arrow Academy label on the 16th of December 2013