“That Cold Day In The Park” (1969)
The expansive Altman we’d come to know and love was a couple of movies away in 1969, but austere and claustrophobic though it is, his third feature “That Cold Day in The Park” shows the green shoots of some of the director’s later recurring concerns. A crabbed and rather bitter little story of an isolated woman who develops an unhealthily possessive relationship with a seemingly mute, homeless young man she invites into her well-appointed apartment one day, the film is centered on a terrific performance from early Altman muse Sandy Dennis. It takes the breakdown of its female protagonist as its focus and makes forays into the surreal and the quasi-dreamlike —all elements Altman would tackle again far more successfully in “3 Women” and especially “Images,” while the relatively contained staging prefigures his 1980s preference for theatrical adaptations. So it’s a shame that ‘Cold Day’ isn’t more engaging than it is —Dennis’ nervy, chattery performance is very strong, but the cast around her is not (particularly the vacant turn from TV actor Michael Burns as The Boy), and ultimately the story gets bogged down in its own contrivance and implausibility; a unconvincing psychological profile of a deeply unlikely psychology. [C+]
“Brewster McCloud” (1970)
Part shaggy dog ’70s movie, part murder mystery and part quirky aviation fantasy, Altman’s anarchic “Brewster McCloud” had been out of DVD circulation for years and was regarded as a black sheep in the director’s oeuvre until recently. However, random and skewed though it is, ‘McCloud’ is much more entertaining and watchable than its reputation suggests. Starring Bud Cort, Altman muse Shelley Duvall (in her debut role), mainstay troupe member Michael Murphy and “M*A*S*H” star Sally Kellerman, this left-of-center curio centers on an peculiar boy (Cort) who constructs a life-size pair of mechanical wings in his hidden bomb shelter home in the Houston Astrodome at the encouragement of a seraphic woman (Kellerman) who also might be his guardian angel. Meanwhile, mysterious deaths are occurring and a San Francisco detective (Murphy) is flown in to solve the case. René Auberjonois plays a narrator/Greek chorus who becomes more avian with each passing update, and Jennifer Salt plays a girl who comes around to masturbate every time Cort takes his shirt off. It’s exactly as nuts as all that sounds —”Scooby-Doo” by way of Hal Ashby— but it’s also an entertaining little bauble of the sort they just don’t make any more. [B-]
“M*A*S*H” (1970)
The film that announced Altman’s large scale arrival on the American film scene, “M*A*S*H” is a movie that probably couldn’t get made today, at least not in the same way. Like many of Altman’s masterpieces, “M*A*S*H” is stubbornly, even defiantly critical of institutional authority. The film’s humor would also fly in the face of today’s increasingly P.C. culture, with mean-spirited (and often hilarious) jokes, gore by the bucketloads and a casually amoral tone that is punctuated with moments of anger and absurdity. The story of a medical personnel unit stationed at a military outpost during the Korean War, “M*A*S*H*” depicts a world where entropy not only exists in the open, but is accepted and even embraced. The only ones who can survive in this bleak, crazy world are those like Elliot Gould’s Capt. “Trapper” John McIntyre, who embraces the chaos and makes funky music out of it. Implicitly a damning critique of the Vietnam war and a riotous cult comedy for the ages, “M*A*S*H*” remains one of Altman’s most socially relevant works, and also one of his most entertaining. “Suicide Is Painless,” goes the cruelly ironic song (lyrics written by Altman’s son Mike) that plays over both the film’s credits, but cinema this vital is not —nor should it be. [A]