Robert Altman @ 100: “Nashville”

By Juan Carlos Ojano

To continue celebrating Robert Atman’s centennial anniversary, I have decided to finally take care of a longtime cinematic blind spot: his seminal 1975 opus Nashville. Released during the heyday of New Hollywood, the film tracks the lives of twenty-four main characters — singers, dreamers, and others — as they navigate their lives in the titular city within five days as the presidential campaign of a populist candidate is set to mount a political rally cum concert. 

For my first encounter with this film, I decided to watch this film twice within a three-day period. And how powerful the experience is...

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Robert Altman @ 100: Susannah York was Almost There

by Cláudio Alves

For the second part of the Robert Altman tribute, consider a crossover with the Almost There series. Throughout his career, the director proved to be one of the best at working with actors within the New Hollywood state of play, whether his movies were tightly focused psychodramas or the more sprawling fare that we tend to associate with Altman. It's no surprise, then, that many of his performers received some buzz, often figuring in the awards season, whether or not they got an Oscar nomination at the end of it all. Today, let's look at Susannah York in the second of Altman's portraits of women on the verge of madness. After That Cold Day in the Park, there was 1972's Images…

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Robert Altman @ 100: "That Cold Day in the Park"

by Cláudio Alves

One hundred years ago today, Robert Altman came into this world. A WWII veteran who got his start in industrial films, he'd become one of the most important figures in American cinema during the heyday of New Hollywood. His career is a sprawling tale of transformations, genre experiments, broad murals of humanity. Sometimes, his work could be claustrophobic, zero-ing on individual psyches, but it often reached for epic proportions and giant ensembles, juxtaposed dialogue galore. Over the next few days, various The Film Experience writers will say their piece about Altman, exploring his films from swinging sixties origins to 21st-century late works.

For our jumping-off point, let's go back to 1969, after Altman had moved from industrial shorts to theater to TV and then to feature cinema. Around the decade's twilight, the director kickstarted an unofficial trilogy about mad women that would later lead to Images and the glory of 3 Women. Yet, before those examinations of the feminine grotesque, it began That Cold Day in the Park…

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Late But Not Forgotten: Shelley Duvall (1949-2024)

by Cláudio Alves

Shelley Duvall behind the scenes of her last film, THE FOREST HILLS (2023).
First of all, preemptive apologies for the solipsism. 

For the past few weeks, I've been struggling with a mounting number of celebrity deaths, each deserving of a tribute. Yet, with every single one comes the need for research, and then, when I think I'll be able to write a good obituary, another loss hits. For a while, I considered doing a giant post, built from essential information on each dear departed artist. It wouldn't be akin to that extensive Donald Sutherland homage - to give an example - but it'd be something. Still, the work dragged on, the pressure mounted, and the delay was reaching absurd proportion. I can only say sorry, dear reader. 

This past Wednesday, as I celebrated my 30th birthday, such affairs still haunted me. And maybe because I was surrounded by friends, basking in sincere affection, perchance a self-pitying reflection or two on the passage of time and getting older, a new approach materialized. Instead of trying to encapsulate a world-class artist's entire history in a write-up, I shall instead ponder what they mean to me personally. Earnestness is the way to go, and hopefully, you'll share what these people mean to you in the comments, too. These pieces will be relatively brief but heartfelt, and they'll start with a star I loved like few others – the inimitable Shelley Duvall…

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Happy Birthday, Shelley Duvall!

by Cláudio Alves

Shelley Duvall is one of a kind. Upon seeing her work in Altman's 3 Women, Andrew Sarris compared her to "a young Katharine Hepburn," while Pauline Kael said she was the "closest thing we've ever come to a female Buster Keaton." And yet, the critic would also inevitably arrive at the same conclusion that she was unique. "There are no forebears or influences that would help to explain Shelley Duvall's acting; she doesn't seem to owe anything to anyone." And so, it's a tragedy that, nowadays, she's mostly remembered as the woman broken by Stanley Kubrick during The Shining's grueling shoot, a pop psychology misreading that's spread through social media despite Duvall's own words on the matter.

Infuriating, it's condescending to a great multi-hyphenated artist whose independence and ambition defined a decades-spanning career in entertainment. Let's keep the wonders of Duvall's work alive and bright, let's remember and honor. I invite you to celebrate the iconoclast on this special occasion, the actress' 74th birthday in a year marked by her return to cinema in The Forest Hills…

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