Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality

Front Cover
U of Minnesota Press, 2002 - Performing Arts - 332 pages
With his complex and unconventional films, Robert Altman often draws an impassioned response from critics but bafflement and indifference from the general public. Some audiences have dismissed his movies as insignificant, unsatisfying, and unreadable. Ironically, Altman might agree: he makes films in order to challenge filmgoers' expectations of straightforward narratives and easily understood endings. In Robert Altman's Subliminal Reality, Robert T. Self sheds light on Altman's work and provides the most comprehensive analysis of his films to date. With close readings of classics like MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and Nashville, as well as the more recent films The Player, Short Cuts, and Cookie's Fortune, Self asserts the value of Altman's work not only to film theory and the entertainment industry but to American culture. Book jacket.
 

Contents

Constructing Kansas City
3
New American Cinema and MASH
22
3 Women
45
Romance and Adventure
74
Nixon Tanner
107
Madness Dreams and Art
144
Nashville
179
Paris Originals
215
Short Cuts
244
The Alternative Gaze
266
Acknowledgments
279
Permissions
317
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information