Word: altmans
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...films obviously reflect my point of view, but I'm not a propagandist...I'm trying to show things as they are, as I see them." --Robert Altman...
...LATE sixties, a novel based on the Korean wartime experiences of its pseudonymous doctor-author, Richard Hooker, had been kicking around Hollywood for several years. Fourteen directors had been offered the property; all turned it down. Director number 15 was Robert Altman, a television refugee with one major picture (That Cold Day in the Park) to his credit. Altman decided to make the film, hired blacklisted writer Ring Lardner, Jr. to do the screenplay, and produced a brilliant black comedy that was a tremendous critical and popular success. M*A*S*H* took the Grand Prize at the 1970 Cannes...
...story of Robert Altman's dramatic rise from obscurity seems interesting primarily as an apparent confirmation of the old meritocratic myth--as a demonstration of American society's receptiveness to new, independent ideas and recognition of talent--hindsight suggests the story has a rather different, ironic significance. In retrospect, Altman's decision to make M*A*S*H* can be seen as typical of the approach to American culture that characterizes his film career to date. In making M*A*S*H*, Altman was not confirming the old American mythology at all; he was attacking...
...simpleminded film, which starred movie war veteran John Wayne (who also served as co-director), tried to cast Vietnam in the heroic mold of the old World War II movies. It didn't work, of course, because Vietnam simply was not World War II, the Duke's exhortations notwithstanding. Altman recognized this, and M*A*S*H*, with its loose, irreverent style, reflects this new vision. The militaristic, patriotic, aggressive, by-the-book Regular Army types who were virtually deified in traditional American war movies appear in M*A*S*H* as incompetent, cowardly, idiotic hypocrites. The romance and glory...
This sense of the falsity, of the absurdity of much of contemporary American culture, and of the myths which engendered and now sustain it, pervades virtually all of the films Altman has made in the eight years since M*A*S*H* was released. Altman's movies are subversive--not because they tell us what to think, but because they make it impossible for us to remain settled in our comfortable old beliefs. They expose the tangled, jury-rigged pulleys and levers that operated behind the quiet, smooth facades of the old Hollywood myth machines. The exposed machines still work...