Robert Altman
15 titles · american independent
The crowd is the protagonist. Altman ran several conversations at once and let the microphone choose, so his films arrive as overheard rather than told — and every genre he touched came back deflated, the western muddy and the detective indifferent.
Signature
- Overlapping dialogue, recorded on separate tracks and mixed like weather.
- Ensembles too large for a lead, cut so the story is whoever is talking.
- Genre revisionism: the myth kept, the heroism removed.
- Zooms that drift across a scene looking for the subject.
M*A*S*H
The Player
The Long Goodbye
Short Cuts
Nashville
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
3 Women
A Prairie Home Companion
Cookie's Fortune
California Split
Brewster McCloud
Kansas City
Thieves Like Us
Vincent & Theo
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