Robert Altman, 81, Mercurial Director of Masterworks and Flops
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Robert Altman, who died Monday at 81, was a filmmaker renowned for experimentation and innovation.
He had an uncanny ability to recover from critical and box-office disasters, staging a comeback four times — with “M*A*S*H” in 1970, “Nashville” in 1975, “The Player” in 1992, and “Gosford Park” in 2001 — after years in the doldrums. In an industry in which a succession of flops can make a director unemployable, Altman was famously prolific. As each film appeared, he was usually shooting another and in pre-production on a third. He dabbled in many genres — Westerns, science fiction, comedy, psychological drama — but was especially drawn to what might be termed kaleidoscopic movies, in which a huge number of characters and subplots interact to form a composite picture of a particular setting or moment in time. “Nashville,” set in the capital of country and western music, had 24 leading roles, “Short Cuts” (1993) even more. “A Wedding” (1978), “Health” (1979), and “Pret-a-Porter” (1995), about the rag trade, were in the same mold.
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