Robert Altman

Before M*A*S*H


Robert Altman (1925-2006) was an American film director known for the anti-war comedy M*A*S*H. (among other films). He served as a bomber during WW2 (flying over 50 missions) and following the war's conclusion he worked in California as a publicist. In 1947, he sold a script (Bodyguard) to RKO and encouraged by this success he pursued a short lived career as a writer in New York. Finding little success, he returned to his home town of Kansas City and began helming industrial films and documentaries before moving onto television work in later years (working on well known shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Bonanza).

Selected Filmography

1970 - M*A*S*H
1975 - Nashville
1978 - A Wedding
1992 - The Player
1993 - Short Cuts
2001 - Gosford Park
2006 - A Prairie Home Companion

Style

Altman's films feature naturalistic elements, with components such as dialogue (in M*A*S*H for instance, the various characters speak over each other as if in a real situation) elaborating the film's realism, and suspending the audience's disbelief further. Altman's films also feature large ensemble casts, all supporting the picture between them. Many of the cast of M*A*S*H were cast as unknowns by Altman (hence why much of the credits feature "introducing...". Altman encouraged improvisation in many of his films to further the naturalistic dialogue. Frequently, Altman included subtexts and anti-war sentiments within his early works and, in this time , he also learnt to work quickly on a low budget.

Quotes


"Filmmaking is a chance to live many lives"
"Its all just one film to me. Just all different chapters"
"When I see an American flag flying, its a joke"
Due to his preference of character motivation and improvisation based around a basic plot, Altman was often labelled an "actor's director".


M*A*S*H


In 1969, during his rise to success (and at the age of 44), Altman was offered the script for MASH (an adaptation of a satirical Korean War novel that many directors had previously declined). Atlman agreed to the project and made his own changes to the screenplay (he rearranged many of the major sequences, threw out the dialogue - which was largely replaced by adlibbing - and by using an unorthodox - episodic - narrative technique he had previously experimented with). Due to his new (and rather strange) style of filmmaking, stars Sutherland and Gould repeatedly tried to fire Altman from the picture (which later resulted in Atlman and Sutherland working again - whereas Gould wrote the director an apology at a future date).

MASH was distributed by 20th Century Fox and shot on a budget of $3.5 million dollars. The film later made $81,600,000 at the box office and spawned a hit tv series several years later. MASH was nominated for 5 Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actress and Editing), while winning one for Adapted Screenplay.