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After a decade working in the commercial trenches of American network television and industrial films, with a few feature films to his credit, Robert Altman emerged in 1970, at age 45, as an improbable elder statesman of a cinematic revolution. M*A*S*H (1970) was his opening salvo. The wide shots, slow drifting zooms and layered, multi-track dialogue that would become the hallmarks of his career displaced the center of classical Hollywood in service of democratizing the film image. As he told film critic David Thompson, he wanted to put audiences “into a situation where they would be offering their own experience to the screen.” Rewriting the rules of American cinema included rewriting our mythologies. An openness to creative chaos was essential to Altman’s method as he explored the improvisational nature of American lives. Eschewing individual heroes, his is an ensemble cinema of anti-heroes and misfits, strivers and losers, dreamers and schlubs interconnected in a community they rarely if ever acknowledge. Altman emerged as an auteur at a moment of radical change in American society. As the designated home of Altman’s print collection, the Archive is honored to present this centennial retrospective as an opportunity to reflect on Altman’s vision of an egalitarian cinema just as we’re going through it again.
Series programmed and notes written by Senior Public Programmer Paul Malcolm.
