Robert Altman was well into his post-NASHVILLE doldrums when he made this ill-conceived dystopian drama on the dwindling survivors of a new Ice Age, frittering away the time they have left playing everyone’s favorite lethal dice game ‘Quintet.’ A starry international cast (Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey, Bibi Andersson, UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS’ David Langton) drone out monotonous exposition & philosophical thoughts, but can’t make human dialogue out of Altman’s weighty pronouncements. Paul Newman’s the Last Potent Man*, but rises to no more than a companionate sleep-over. Mostly, he roams around the safe house, a brutalist bunker against wintry climate. (With an interior like the exterior of the Georges Pompidou Center . . . if they’d stopped paying the electric bill.) Those who stick around in spite of the blurred Vaseline-edged compositions get rewarded with a perplexed reaction shot for the ages from Newman after hearing Gassman’s big justification speech in the last act. (The one laugh in the pic.) Others may enjoy some percussive bits in a score reminiscent of Jack Buchanan’s production of OEDIPUS REX in Vincente Minnelli’s THE BAND WAGON/’53. There it was intentionally OTT.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Sean Connery held Last Erection honors to far better effect in John Boorman’s wackadoodle oddity ZARDOZ/’74. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/zardoz-1974.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Newman had far more luck with ‘solid-craftsman’ directors than with legends. Huston, Hitchcock, Altman all failed him . . . and vice versa. (THE COLOR OF MONEY/’86, his Oscar winner with Scorsese has its champions . . . good luck finding them.)
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