Robert Altman is my favorite film director. But because of
that inherent bias, and since I haven't seen The Long Goodbye
in a long while and am not interested in getting into a
debate on its particular merits, I've held my fire up till
now.
However, the comment on Altman's presumed failures Popeye, OC
and Stiggs, and Pret-a-Porter prompted me to dig back in my
email files and find a post I made to another group last
year. It's a piece on the DVD release of Images, in which I
discuss that film in relation to the work of a number of
other directors. I won't reproduce all of it. But the
concluding paragraphs capture my credo with respect to
Altman, or any other artist whose work I respect, and I stand
by this argument:
"In an interview on the Images DVD, Altman reiterates his
frequently- made point that all his films are installments in
an ongoing vision and that assessments of the installments as
being higher or lower in quality don't matter much to him: if
you're interested in the vision, you're interested in the
vision, right? I think we should take Altman seriously on
this: it is a challenge to us to reframe our way of
experiencing films. This is not to say that there are no
differences of quality between films or that those
assessments don't matter in some ways; it is to say that,
once a director has shown their artistic distinction and
their ability to control their projects without major
compromise, everything they do is interesting and of value
because it expresses their vision.
Consider the directors mentioned that I have mentioned in
reference to Altman: Losey, Polanski, Bergman, Fassbinder,
Coen, Fellini, Roeg, Huston, Welles, Weir
-- all of them have tremendous artistic distinction, all
control their projects to a very large extent (certain
exceptions of studio interference easily noted), and I would
therefore advance the thesis that none of them ever made a
"bad" film. We need everything they did.
This business of charting an artist's work strictly in terms
of peaks and valleys is pop journalism, not serious
criticism. Pauline Kael set the tone for discussion of Altman
in her early reviews, which went up and down like a ping-pong
ball; loved MASH, hated Brewster McCloud, loved McCabe and
Mrs. Miller, hated Images (and at that point she said that
since she had discerned a definite alternating hit/miss
pattern, she couldn't wait for his next film). She continued
on in that opinioneering way throughout his career. Kael
wrote much that was interesting on Altman, but I would submit
that as his biggest champion, she nonetheless misunderstood
the actual pattern of his work pretty completely. Pauline
Kael didn't care about Robert Altman's vision; she cared
whether she liked the particular movie. That's a serious flaw
in a critic."
Best regards, Mark Harris
On 11/12/07, Channing <
filmtroll@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> With Kansas City Altman proved he could do period.
And with The
> Player he proved he could do noir. But with Long
Goodbye he did
> neither.
>
> I admire Altman's creativity and willingness to
experiment, but on
> Long Goodbye I feel he missed the point. I also feel
Gould was
> mis-cast and I disliked various changes to the plot
of the book. And
> I hated how Gould was such a chump that he loses
every argument, even
> one with a cat.
>
> I am aware that the critical consensus is that The
Long Goodbye is a
> great film, I disagree and I'm in the minority. But
even if it's a
> "classic" film it's a bad interpretation of Raymond
Chandler.
>
> And I suggest that with films like Popeye, OC and
Stiggs, and Pret a
> Porter that Altman missed his target by a long shot
and that it's not
> beyond the realm of possibility that he could've
missed on Long
> Goodbye as well.
>
> --Chan
>
>
>
-- Mark R. Harris 2122 W. Russet Court #8 Appleton WI 54914 (920) 470-9855 brokerharris@gmail.com
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