Images

This is one of the most compelling films I've seen in a long time. I wasn't sure if I was in the mood for a serious "psychological thriller" but this movie held my rapt attention until the very end. A brilliant example of just how talented Robert Altman is as a filmmaker. While most people pigeonhole him as "that guy who makes the movies with the large ensemble casts and lots of overlapping dialogue", this movie finds him working with a cast of six, and most of the action takes place within the heroine's head. Beautiful (of course) photography by Vilmos Zsigmond is just the icing on the cake. Don't miss this forgotten treasure by an American master.

Under the assumption that Altman was creatively peaking between the years 1970 and 1975, (I realize this is debatable) I sought out every film that was made during that period. Surprisingly, I could not locate the brilliant, chilling lost treasure that is the film "Images" it seemed to have simply vanished into history. Although Susannah York deservedly earned best actress at Cannes for her performance, and it was sandwiched between "The Long Goodbye" and "Mccabe and Mrs. Miller" this film, like "3 women" and "California Split", remain mysteries. Luckily, "Images" was released on DVD this past September. I immediately bought it without a second thought. I am very thankful that I did.

Images is one of those gems that make you appreciate cinema, directors and the creative process in general, because of the exploritive potential within the medium. Dredging up the inner fears and archetypes of the subconscious and weaving together what comes to the surface synergistically is Altmans vision in this film. Sadly, lately, film is about loud bangs and shiny things and very few adroitly capture the lost art of character development.

"Images" seems to be one of those films that could only have taken place in the early seventies. During the era of psychedelic drugs, the film indubitably feels as though it is on some kind of mind altering substance. It is completely trippy and unnerving. Logic seems to have flown out the window from the onset of the story. I won't give anything away, because you need to go into this film knowing nothing, or little to nothing about it, and just enjoy the ride.

Robert Altman isn't a director that you would usually associate with the horror genre - but that was what made this film all the more intriguing for yours truly. However, while Altman takes obvious influence from Roman Polanski's Repulsion - an idea good enough to spawn a good horror film and ambiguous enough to be given a different slant to the original - Altman's film really didn't do much for me. The plot concerns Cathryn; a housewife who visits a 'weekend cottage' with her husband. However, while at this tranquil location; she begins seeing various apparitions, and proceeds to kill them off one by one. The film slots into the 'slow burn horror' niche, and while this sort of film can often produce good results, this one doesn't generate a great deal of interest and as intrigue is key to the plot, it all falls down. The film deserves some plaudits for the fact that it's all of a very high quality; Altman's direction is generally strong and he gets good performances out of his cast, but this doesn't count for much when the film moves at a snail's pace. Images tends to get good ratings across the board, so perhaps I've missed something and my criticism is misplaced - but I doubt it!

Robert Altman applies the same widescreen canvas he had previously used to capture the chaotic communities of a Korean War MASH unit and a primitive Pacific Northwest mining town to the quieter but no less chaotic internal workings of a troubled woman's psyche in this unsettling and uneven psychological thriller.

Susannah York plays Cathryn, wife of a distracted husband (Rene Auberjonois), whose affairs with two men (one a family friend) and her inability to have children become obsessive memories that haunt her and drive her over the brink of insanity during a stay at a quiet country home (the country is never identified, though the movie was filmed in Ireland). She begins the film as a wounded and hunted animal, jumping at every sound and image she hears or sees. One of her past lovers appears as a ghost, the other arrives at the country home with his daughter and gropes Cathryn when her husband's back is turned. The two lovers are vaguely threatening and abusive; her husband is dismissive and treats her like a child. Cathryn realizes that she can take control and kill off her unpleasant memories -- but at the same time she loses the ability to distinguish between reality and her own feverish imaginings.

On a first viewing, "Images" is absorbing and oddly fascinating, but it doesn't hold up well. For one, Cathryn isn't a compelling character, and that dooms the project from the start, since there's barely a scene in the film that doesn't revolve around her. She begins the film unhinged and really has nowhere to go from there except more unhinged. We don't learn much about her, and her illness isn't placed in any context. Susannah York delivers a shrill performance, all screeches and irrational outbursts; the male characters all come across as asses. Altman seems to be trying his hand at a feminist text, but he goes about it in the clichéd way that male artists too often address "female" issues. I think he's making some point about the way movies objectify women, turning them into "images" for the consumption of male viewers. After all, Cathryn is little more than something for the men in the film to enjoy, and cameras figure prominently in the film's mise-en-scene (Cathryn's husband is an amateur photographer). At one point, she fires one of her husband's guns (that universal symbol of male sexual power) at the ghost of her dead lover, and finds that she has instead destroyed her husband's camera. Nice try Altman, but awfully heavy handed if you ask me.

I'm a champion of Robert Altman's films, and he's never failed to fascinate me with any of his experiments, but such is the nature of experimenting that some are going to succeed more than others. "Images" came on the heels of a marvelous trio of films ("MASH," "Brewster McCloud" and "McCabe & Mrs. Miller") with which Altman announced his arrival as an important figure in American cinema, and he would follow it with four more ("The Long Goodbye," "Thieves Like Us," "California Split" and "Nashville") that would reinforce that claim, but "Images" itself is a weak link in the chain.

The stars of "Images" are the mesmerizing production design and the sterling cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond.

Grade: B

An arty horror movie is the last thing one expects from Robert Altman - although, apparently, he had already tried it out with his earlier, little-seen THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK (1969). The writer/director (itself an unusual combination for Altman, but it shows how strongly he felt about the project) himself does not think of it as such and, in any case, reviews at the time were decidedly mixed.

Even if he was "inspired" by Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA (1966), the film actually feels closer plot-wise to Roman Polanski's REPULSION (1965). Originally intended to be shot in Milan with Sophia Loren, the film definitely benefits from its picturesque Irish locations and Susannah York's fragile performance (which eventually earned her the Best Actress Award at Cannes) as a schizophrenic; she, too, was unusually committed and actually allowed a story for kids she had written - called "In Search Of Unicorns" - to be incorporated into the narrative!

The film features only five major characters and, interestingly, these are named after each of the actors themselves: so Susannah York plays Cathryn just as Cathryn Harrison (Rex's daughter, a very natural performer who later featured in another strange film - Louis Malle's BLACK MOON [1975]) plays Susannah; Marcel Bozzuffi's character is named Rene', Rene' Auberjonois is Hugh and Hugh Millais is Marcel! Of course, all this fits perfectly well with the film's theme and the characters' penchant to exchange 'faces' with each other in the mind of the disturbed protagonist; actually, this concept is pretty frightening because the lead character at one point decides to get rid of her 'ghosts' - but, not having a complete grasp on reality, one is never sure whether the victims are mere figments of her imagination or else real people!

Also essential to establishing the film's unique mood is Vilmos Zsigmond's stylish cinematography and John Williams' stark yet evocative score (interspersed with eerie sounds provided by Stomu Yamash'ta, a Japanese sound designer); even though his work here is galaxies away from Williams' renowned anthemic scores for the likes of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, he still managed to earn an Oscar nomination for it!