Introduction to Robert Altman's 3 Women
A talk I gave at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham this weekend
Hello faithful readers. I don’t usually post content exclusively for my paid subscribers, but I’m making an exception this week. The usual diary will be posted as normal tomorrow, but today I’m sharing a version of the introduction I delivered at a screening of 3 Women (dir. Robert Altman, 1977) at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham yesterday (Saturday 23rd July). Thanks again to Kate at Broadway (also a frequently cameo in the diary) and to Joey at Kino Klubb for inviting me. It was nice to do an introduction! If you program films and want me to do an introduction, then please let me know!
(This post is for paid subscribers, but I’m sending a preview to free subscribers too in the hopes that it will titillate you enough that you’ll consider coughing up and extending your support of the diary. If you’d really like to read it but can’t afford a subscription, just let me know and I’ll send it to you.)
Hi everyone. Thanks for coming, and thanks to Kate for inviting me to introduce 3 Women today. It’s a real pleasure to be here. I’ve been to a fair number of film introductions and the worst ones have always been those which talk mostly about the film, those which tell the audience what they’re about to see. The best ones have mostly been gossip. I was hoping to offer you something like the latter today, but I’ve actually struggled to turn up anything particularly juicy about the film and its production, so hopefully I’ll at least manage to avoid spoiling the film for you all before you see it. I do think it’s not really the kind of film that someone can ‘spoil’ by discussing what happens in it, since there’s barely any plot to speak of, but to be on the safe side I’ll assume that the majority of you haven’t seen it before and that you would all prefer to go into the screening without knowing exactly what’s going to happen. With that in mind, I’ll try and keep my comments away from the film itself. Instead, I’ll talk a little bit about Altman’s career, and the place of this particular film within it, and I’ll also talk about cinema in the 1970s, and Altman’s role in the bigger picture of the decade, and I’ll talk a bit about how Altman himself talked about this film, and then I’ll try and persuade you all not to worry about figuring out what exactly is going on in the film itself, and encourage you all to be open to the feeling of confusion and uncertainty that comes with it.
So, to start with Altman. Robert Altman was an extraordinarily prolific director. He was born in 1925 and he died in 2006, aged 81. During the Second World War he flew a B-24 bomber in Borneo. He got his start in movies after selling a script to RKO in 1948, and then spent a year trying to make it as a writer in New York. It didn’t work out, and he moved home, to Kansas City, Missouri, where he got his real education in filmmaking, honing his style and skill-set directing technical and educational films for a firm called the Calvin Company. He made 65 films for them, and then eventually moved into TV, briefly working as a director on Alfred Hitchcock Presents before spending about a decade working on series dramas.
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