The
American Robert Altman died in the Cedars-Sinai hospital of Los
Angeles, Monday November 20, of complications due to a cancer. 81 years
old, it had revealed in March, during the handing-over of a Oscar of
honor (He never received the famous sculpture), which it had profited
eleven years ago of a heart transplant of a woman of about thirty
years. “If I calculate well, it had launched to All-Hollywood, you give
me this Oscar too early. I still have some for forty years, and I
intend well to use them!”
Born on February 20, 1925 in Kansas City (Missouri), formed by the
Jesuits, Robert Altman had engaged in the Air Force at the 17 years age
and had been useful as copilot of bomber during the second world war.
After some jobs, this impassioned cinema had carried out industrial
films, had adopted the Hollywood way of life (play, girls, alcohol) and
makes its classes on television, carrying out episodes for the series
“Alfred Hitchcock present”, “Maverick” or “Bonanza”. The Sicilian
George Litto, who became his agent, then describes it like “a whore of
rebel”. When it melts its house of production, Lion' S Gate, Altman has
a reputation of hard with irascible leather.
His career starts truly in 1970 with M.A.S.H. It carried out two films
in the general indifference when he worked hard to turn this scenario
of Boxing ring Lardner Jr. (old victim of the maccarthysme), refused by
about fifteen directors: a violent satire antimilitarist which occurs
during the war from Korea in a surgical antenna where medical students
make the four hundred blows.
Horrified by his believed dialogues, the cocktail of blood and fun and
this foot of nose to the heroic tradition, the producer Darryl Zanuck
asks for cuts but Altman has an ally, Otto Preminger, who requires
projection-tests, which the film leaves ovationné. Third with
the boxoffice of the year behind Coils Story and Airport, this scathing
attack mild nutter receives five nominations with the Oscars and gold
the Palm of the Festival of Cannes. Altman becomes the symbol of a new
generation decided to pickle America of his assuaging mythologies.
He dynamites the stereotypes, subjects the kinds to a disrespectful
play of massacre: in John McCabe (1971), twilight western, the hero is
a tenant of brothel in a city in prey with the defects; in Brewster
McCloud (1970), chronicle of the dreams of insane flying in America
nut, or Images (1972), portrait of a schizophrene, it subjects the
action to its poetic research; The Long Goodbye (Deprived, 1973),
Philip Marlowe of Raymond Chandler, interpreted by Elliott Gould, is
exceeded by the events; We all are of the robbers (1974) depicts of the
outlaws reluisants little; California Split (1974).
Hustling the taboos, Altman makes fun of the cops and the puritans, the
billionaires and the politicians and ridicules all that Hollywood
venerated. “Whoever would drive a car like Steve McQueen in Bullitt,
even if it continued Adolf Hitler, should be immediately interned”,
says it. His cow-boys walk in snow and mud, its detective wanders as a
sleepwalker with a beard hirsute, its accounts scorn the exemplary
heroes to be interested in the ways of life.
More set on tables than of portraits, ironic with regard to the
destinies individual and impassioned by crowd, it widens her field of
vision. Altman is follower of the kaleidoscope and collective creation.
In 1975, with Nashville, he invents a style: evoking the life of the
temple of the country music at the same time as the primary educations
of a presidential election, it follows the trajectories of twenty-four
different characters. Henceforth, its frescos paint out the social
rites, uncover the company of the spectacle and the dead ends
psychoanalytical, draw up the inventory of the generally accepted
ideas, sexual disillusions, the supposed masquerades to make the
sorting between the order and chaos.
Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976) denounces the lies of an ideology
based on the money and the show, Three women (1977) fustigates the
control of three lost with the codes of femininity, a marriage (1978)
shows a company solidified behind the mask of suitabilities and hiding
its tares (adultery, nymphomania, epilepsy, marijuana), Quintet (1979)
is a parodic and morbid science fiction. The scenario writer will find
the magic of his collective digressions with Short Cuts (1993, gold
Lion in Venice), according to Raymond Carver, portrait of a group of
Americans exposed during an earthquake.
Meanwhile, there will have been Popeye (1980), anti-Superman of comic
strip which reveals Robin Williams, of resounding commercial failures,
the ruptures with the studios wearied by its provocations and its
refusal to yield with the modes. Robert Altman turns to the independent
producers, then folds back himself on Europe, films a ballet (Company),
the history of a transvestite who is caught for James Dean (Reviens
Jimmy Dean, return, 1992), of the plays (Streamers, Fool for Love, of
the dramaturgies in places closed according to Harold Pinter, Sam
Shepard or itself), of the televisual adaptations, a delirious
monologue of Richard Nixon (Secret Honor, 1985), report-fictions like
Tanner 88, where it follows the election campaign of a fictitious
candidate to presidential of 1988, or a biography of Van Gogh (Vincent
and Théo, 1990).
Never, whatever the endured tests, Robert Altman doesnt give back. His
exercises virtuosos give its news regularly: comedy on connected
zombies, Beyond Therapy (1987), full of brilliances movements of
camera, The Player (1992, Price of the setting in scene in Cannes)
investigation into the nauseous slides of Hollywood; turned with Paris
and anobli by a princely casting (Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren,
Kim Basinger, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Lauren Bacall, Sonia Rykiel
and Karl Lagerfeld, which will protest against this procession of a
ridiculous microcosm), Loan-with-to carry (1994) size a suit in the
middle of the fashion, his writers snobs, its dressmakers effeminate
and its mannequins without decency; painting of manners of the gentry
of the years 1930, Gosford Park (2002) orchestra the waltz of the
Masters and the servants in a “murder party” way Agatha Christie.
This large disrespectful scenario writer was a Homeric character. It is
necessary to have seen it opening the door of the de luxe hotel to you
where it had a continuation, in slippers and pyjamas bermuda shorts, to
await your questions by ordering its bacon and its poached eggs, to
fustigate an industry dedicated to the comic strips and the mechanical
animals, and to take an air inspired before answering you, coin of
currency to the hand. “Pile, I choose humour like valve intended to
attenuate the terrifying character of my denunciations, face, I choose
the opposite thesis: I am irrepressible a gay dog, rather than a
pessimist…”
In 2000, Robert Altman had declared that the election of George W. Bush
was “a terrible reverse for the American company”. He had honoured in
1999 in Cookie' S Fortune the universe with the bluesmen with
Mississippi. Its last film, A Meadow Home Connection, that the French
distributors renamed - as visited by a fatal premonition - The Last
Show, recalls the last public recording of a radio broadcast emitted of
Minnesota and specialized in the old women songs. He leaves on December
6, and one sees there a woman, phantom in white raincoat, to wander
among the singers country condemned to unemployment.
