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Robert Altman |
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Director / Producer / Screenwriter |
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1925 - 2006 |
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Born February 20,
Kansas City, Missouri, USA |
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Key Production Country: USA,
UK |
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Key Genres:
Ensemble Film, Drama, Satire, Comedy Drama, Comedy,
Americana, Crime, Psychological Drama |
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Key Collaborators: Stephen
Altman (Production Designer), Shelley Duvall (Leading Player), Geraldine Peroni (Editor),
Michael Murphy (Character Player), Pierre Mignot (Cinematographer), Lou
Lombardo (Editor), Rene Auberjonois (Character Player), Elliott Gould
(Character Player), Leon Ericksen (Production Designer), John Schuck (Leading Character
Player) |
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Highly
Recommended: California
Split (1974), The
Player (1992)* |
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Recommended:
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)*, The Long Goodbye (1973)*, Thieves Like Us (1974), Nashville (1975)*, 3 Women (1977)*,
Tanner '88 [TV] (1988), Short Cuts (1993)*,
Cookie's Fortune (1998), Gosford Park (2001)^ |
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Worth a Look: M*A*S*H (1970)*, Images
(1972), A Wedding (1978), Secret Honor (1984), Vincent & Theo (1990),
The Company
(2003)A Prairie
Home Companion (2006)^ |
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Approach with Caution:
Brewster McCloud (1970), Quintet (1979), A Perfect Couple (1979), Popeye
(1980), Streamers (1983), Pret-a-Porter (1994) |
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Duds: Come Back to
the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982), Fool for Love (1985),
Beyond Therapy (1987), Kansas City (1995) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section; ^
Listed in TSPDT's
21st Century's Most Acclaimed Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
]
[
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Wikipedia ] [
Salon
Feature ] [
BBC
Audio Interview (1990) ] [
Filmbug Biography ] [
Reverse
Shot Interview (2006)
] [
Artline Article ] [
Film
Scouts Interviews ] [
Boston Globe Article (2006) ] [
Telegraph Article (2006) ] [
Broadway World Photo Tribute (2006)
] [
Village Voice Article (2006)
] [
Observer Article (2006) ] [
indieWIRE Tribute (2006) ] [
Film International
Article (2006) ]
[
New York Times Article (2006) ] [
Gerald
Peary Interview (2001) ] |
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Books:
[
Altman on Altman ] [
Robert
Altman: Interviews ] [
Robert
Altman: Hollywood Survivor ] [
A
Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman ] [
Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff ] [
Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality ] [
Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman's Masterpiece ] |
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"Robert
Altman is American cinema's greatest iconoclast. Prolific,
experimental, visionary and ambitious, he is a director whose
career spans over five decades and includes over thirty feature
films. Known as a maverick director (a label he denies), Altman
eschews the market-oriented climate of Hollywood, refusing to bow
to studio demands and insisting on total control over his
material. The result is an eclectic body of work that moves across
several genres, each picture effectively dismantling the generic
conventions on which it draws."
-
Tanya
Horeck (Contemporary North American Film Directors, 2002)
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"Altman's
use of multi-track sound is also incredibly complex: sounds are
layered upon one another, often emanating from different speakers
in such a way that the audience member must also decide what to
listen for. Indeed, watching and listening to an Altman film
inevitably requires an active participant: events unroll with a
Bazinian ambiguity. Altman's Korean War comedy M*A*S*H was
the director's first public success with this kind of soundtrack."
-
Charles
Derry (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991) |
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"Altman is
usually happier with large casts than small: while elegantly shot
and acted, the intimate theatrical adaptations he was reduced to
making in the 80s (he's always been an outsider in Hollywood) lack
the social, historical and philosophical import of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, the made-for-TV Tanner '88,
The Player and Short Cuts - movies which confirm
him, however erratic his output, as one of the greatest - and most
stylistically innovative - filmmakers of the modern era." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"The
director proffers an elliptical, poignant, often bitingly
satirical vision of American sensibilities." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"Maybe
there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses
humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down
to what people are to people." -
Robert Altman |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director that we
haven't seen include The Delinquents (1957), Countdown (1968),
That Cold Day in the Park (1969), Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or
Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976), H.E.A.L.T.H. (1979), O.C. & Stiggs
(1987), Jazz '34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing (1996), The
Gingerbread Man (1997), and Dr. T & the Women (2000). |
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"Altman’s
anti-aesthetics is anti-Hollywood, and he follows instead in
the line of
Rossellini,
de Sica,
Fellini,
and
Bergman. There are of
course
enormous differences between these European directors and
Altman. Although the carnivalesque bustling of many Altman
films can recall only
Fellini, the two directors’
attitudes toward sound design, for instance, is completely
antithetical. Every sound in
Fellini is dubbed in
postproduction, often quite noticeably, whereas almost
everything in Altman is recorded on the spot, including his
trademark overlapping dialogue." -
Steven Dillon, The Solaris Effect: Art
& Artifice in Contemporary American Film |
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●
Top 250 Directors |
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●
100 Essential Directors (Pop
Matters) |
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●
Survey
of Filmmakers: Top 25 Directors (2005 poll by The Film
Journal) |
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●
Gerald Peary's Magnificent Seven (2006) |
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501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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Paul
Thomas Anderson |
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Hal
Ashby |
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Robert
Benton |
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Peter
Bogdanovich |
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Howard
Hawks |
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Mike Nichols |
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●
Bob
Rafelson |
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●
Jean
Renoir |
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●
Tim
Robbins |
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●
Nicolas
Roeg |
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●
Alan
Rudolph |
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●
Steven
Soderbergh |
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