Volume 22, Number 20 · December 11, 1975
The Current Cinema
By Veronica Geng
Robert Altman's not just working at his talent's peak now; he isn't just putting together movies better than any director's ever done. It's as if he's trashed the entire form. By junking the LA hacks' formulas, and the Europeans', he's reinvented movies at some new level, so that the word 'movie' 's relevant now only when it's preceded by the word 'Altman.' In St. Pete, we're at a convention of department-stores' Santas in St. Petersburg, Florida—seniorsville at its sappiest and most brutal. The picture's knockout. There's nothing the matter with it. It's Altman's farewell to movies, with their Esperanto sensibilities, their bogus art and darling 'actors.' It's as if the whole sanctimonious-aesthete-in-tinsel-land scene bombed out ten years ago, and he's the only one who's noticed, or who's cared.
Feature, 291 words
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