One of the true greats in the pantheon of cult directors, Robert Altman died last Monday it has been announced. With his instantly recognisable style of overlapping dialogue, large casts and willingness to improvise, he was one of the most influential artisits to emerge from Hollywood of the seventies.
After graduating from industrial films to two early features, The Delinquents and documentary The James Dean Story, Altman moved into television, only returning to the big screen at the end of the sixties with science fiction epic Countdown. But come the seventies, he directed MASH and so began a string of idiosyncratic films that fell out of favour when the eighties arrived: weirdo comedy Brewster McCloud, western McCabe and Mrs Miller, ghost story Images, Chandler adaptation The Long Goodbye, period thriller Thieves Like Us, gambling comedy California Split, and Nashville - which some regard as his masterpiece.
During the late seventies, the experimental side of Altman took over with work like the strange 3 Women, black comedy A Wedding, sci-fi Quintet and A Perfect Couple, so he seemed an odd choice to direct Popeye, and it was a notorious flop. He continued through the eighties with smaller profile films like Secret Honor, Fool for Love and O.C. and Stiggs, but his excellent political TV series Tanner '88 earned him an Emmy and bigger projects. The nineties and 2000s saw hits like industry satire The Player, Carver adaptation Short Cuts and murder mystery Gosford Park and a TV movie return to Tanner, with his last film A Prairie Home Companion winning warm reviews.
