"3 Women" (cinema styles)

[C C]

1977 flick of Robert Altman's that quickly disappeared from the movie landscape until The Criterion Collection remastered it in the early 2000s. Has some David Lynch like resonances in it, particularly Mulholland Drive (maybe Lynch even got his salvage inspiration for the latter from "3 Women"). Doesn't hurt to compare it to the surreality of the 1968 film The Swimmer, too, which I watched just the day before.

Roger Ebert gave it four stars back in the day, but Gene Siskel (2 and a half stars) watched it twice and still couldn't make any sense of it even as allegory. The key might be to treat the ending as the actual reality, and what preceded it as a figurative hallucination or psychological subversion, where identities can migrate to different characters in the dream at times. Some even suggest that it concludes a trilogy of mental condition themes first explored in Altman's "That Cold Day in the Park" (1969) and "Images" (1972).

At any rate -- the quaint behaviors, Sissy Spacek's chidlike eccentricity, and odd portraits of situations and personalities is sort of worth something in itself. Even if the viewer struggles to construe where it's going or what _X_ development indicates.

"3 Women" - Criterion Collection trailer ... https://youtu.be/hPlPg16gwJo

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hPlPg16gwJo

[Magical Realist]

My sister and I love Altman movies going thru a phase for awhile with "Short Cuts" and "A Wedding", "M.A.S.H.," "The Player", and "Three Women." I need to see 3W again to better appreciate its surrealistic undertones.

[C C]

I finally watched Altman's "That Cold Day in the Park" and then "Images". I guess one could say that there is a progression across the three films from an eccentric "protagonist" who isn't fully revealed to be psychotic/delusional until the end, to one who is flagrantly hallucinating throughout the movie, to that stage attained in "3 Women" where the viewers themselves are the ones who become disoriented as to what the heck is going on.

Wild to see René Auberjonois in "Images", more than 20 years before the character he played in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". And then there was the surprise of Cathryn Harrison as Marcel's daughter, three years before she starred in the super-weird French fantasy Black Moon.

Coincidentally, I randomly saw 1969's "The Mad Room" a couple of nights before, and lo and behold there is Michael Burns again playing a boy role in "That Cold Day in the Park". Uncanny -- no connection between the two films expected -- either like that or in any other way.

Images ... https://youtu.be/8lqa125dirE

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8lqa125dirE

That Cold Day in the Park ... https://youtu.be/OLmnQlJ8Lh8

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/OLmnQlJ8Lh8