Images (Robert Altman, 1972) (Patreon)

Wow, it's easy to forget what a long shadow Ingmar Bergman cast over the arthouse directors of the 70s. From its focus on fractured female subjectivity right down to its Vilmos Zsigmond cinematography, whose faded browns and greens resemble the early color work of Bergman and Tarkovsky, directors who began in black-and-white, Images is off-brand Altman. But I must say I was a bit surprised by it, considering its relatively bad reputation. I've often seen this film listed alongside Quintet as another of the director's most pretentious misfires, and that's simply incorrect. There is a precision and clarity of purpose to Images that buoys it through almost all of its ambiguities. This isn't a film for everyone, and certainly won't please the Nashville / M*A*S*H crowd. But c'mon, neither would McCabe or 3 Women.

In fact, 3 Women was the Altman film Images most reminded me of, with its reduced cast, diffuse psychology, and general air of menace. And like 3 Women, Images never entirely locates its odd doings within the troubled mind of its protagonist. The possibility of the supernatural remains an entirely plausible explanation for what we're witnessing, right up to the very end. (In this regard, Images is also very much like a Nicolas Roeg film, except much more sedate.) Cathryn (Susannah York, outstanding) provides her own Greek chorus as a VO reciting lines from a children's fantasy book, as we see the "real" Cathryn struggle with anxiety about her husband Hugh (Rene Auberjonois) and his possible infidelity. At first, he seems to morph into another man, but we then discover that this "other" is Rene (Marcel Bozzuffi), Cathryn's dead lover. Further complications arise when Hugh brings home a family friend, Marcel (Hugh Millais) and his daughter Susannah (Cathryn Harrison). Marcel continues to make vulgar passes at Cathryn right under Hugh's nose.

The way that Altman mixes up the character and actor names should tell us, right off the bat, that he is interested in gamesmanship. This doesn't mean Images isn't to be taken seriously, mind you, but perhaps not as seriously as others seem to think it wants to be taken. The film's fixation of objects and graphic matches, the doubling of bodies in space, and the continual dislocation of character positions throughout the house, all create a vaguely Carrièrian vibe, wherein attaching the disruptions in mise-en-scène to mental illness, while reasonable, feels a bit like an interpretive cop-out. When you consider the aggressive placement of objects of visuality, like the stereoscope, or Hugh's old plate-negative camera, Altman definitely wants to remind us that cinema itself -- especially narrative cinema, that which asks us to identify with someone onscreen, outside ourselves -- is a form of sanctioned schizophrenia.