1972 Directed by Robert Altman
Cathryn is suffering from schizophrenia and is haunted by hallucinations of apparitions. Her husband has his mind on other things, while her mental state is deteriorating. She is unable to define whether the people around her, like visitors to their house, are real or imaginary.
Образы, Видения, Obrazy, 환상 속의 사랑, ロバート・アルトマンのイメージズ, Végzetes képzelgések, Hayal ve Görüntü, Spiegelbilder, Imágenes, Priviđenja, Schizo - Den kluvna verkligheten, A Sombra do Duplo Amante, Mareritt i dagslys, Sairaat mielikuvat, Образи, Vidiny
This was a first time watch for me. And thanks to Arrow Films, I was able to watch the brand new scan and restoration on Blu-ray. It was an experience because I was overwhelmed with the beauty of this film. I'm speaking to both picture and sound. It's a real technical feat.
Vilmos Zsigmond shot this Panavision (anamorphic) and it's GORGEOUS. Really bold lighting (or lack of lighting) and such rich, immersive images. I wish I had a list of the lenses.
I had no idea that Susannah York was a writer. This film is based on her book In Search of Unicorns. And her writing is strong... always felt I was catching up with the screenplay which is much…
SHOCKtober Day 10 of 31
Robert Altman’s idiosyncratic, psychological thriller, Images, opens with narration of a children’s fantasy epic by the story’s creator and the film’s central character, Cathryn (Susannah York, who actually penned and was given a co-writing credit for the featured tale), an author working on her newest book from her well-appointed home. We see evidence of her struggle with the writing process—crumpled pages and strewn accoutrements—scribbling and mumbling back lines to herself in the loneliness. A menagerie of reflective surfaces—mirrors, lenses, glass and baubles—magnify the empty spaces, doubling Cathryn’s image in her isolation.
When a mysterious phone call incites suspicions of infidelity within her marriage, Cathryn avoids the menacing, incessant ring of the mirthful warning by leaving…
When I compared The Father to thrillers that employ unreliable narration to heighten the effect of the psychological experience, this is exactly what I was referring to. Altman's idiosyncratic creation is a disorienting experiment in psychological horror, in which the audience is forced to share in the protagonist's confusion as the camera becomes an unreliable source of information and the editing plays around with time and the fabric of reality itself. Completely immersing the viewer in the mindset of unsettling mental chaos and keeping us guessing as to what is real and what is hallucination, Altman dredges up the inner fears and archetypes of the subconscious and synergistically weaves together what comes to the surface. We are taken along on…
"This is not happening."
Robert Altman first conceived the psychological horror film Images in 1967, between his decade-long apprenticeship spent writing and directing television episodes and his disastrous 1968 Hollywood trial-by-fire Countdown (from which he was fired before completion), but he was predictably unable to generate much interest in the project at the time. Though he was able to finish his next project—the 1969 nonstarter That Cold Day in the Park—it seemed Altman's Hollywood film career might be a short-lived one. But fortune struck in the form of more than a dozen refusals by established directors to helm an offbeat film entitled M*A*S*H about a pair of nonconformist medical surgeons in the Korean War.
Altman took on the assignment despite…
Finally got around to watching this and I was not disappointed. Dark, twisted, and full of great fog shrouded atmosphere and general fall vibes, this tale of a woman’s descent into madness belongs right up there with Repulsion and I’m a bit baffled as to why it isn’t better known than it is.
This is another hidden gem of 70’s surreal horror with a great ambient score. Susannah York gives one of the greatest performances I’ve seen in quite some time. It really is her movie and everyone else is just lucky to be there. There are scenes that weave seamlessly in and out of one another and because she’s losing her mind, there are times when characters do the same thing and it’s all just great trippy fun so if you’re into that then this is very worth checking out. Absolutely best watched at dusk with the wind howling at the windows and leaves blowing all around. 🍂
As I watched this particular work by Robert Altman, I kept thinking how interesting it would have been if the director hadn't stopped and made more horror films.
One can agree with the statement that the ambiguity that prevails in this film can be frustrating for many in the audience who are seeking some kind of resolution. This is a movie that to some extent refuses to convey this to the audience while at the same time leaving breadcrumbs for us to follow in order to piece together the puzzle as best we can.
Personally, I see this is as a form of study on how guilt and loneliness can exacerbate our feeling of emotional dislocation, which in exchange can…
one of the many things which makes this film sing is susannah york's ability to melt from carnality to propriety in half a second's time
If one is to be crazy and potentially dangerous to those in the immediate vicinity it is probably best to be crazy and dangerous in as wide an array of lovely floral prints as can be mustered even if so doing does not help one keep track of time or space in the least and if there is a country cottage available in which to be clad in floral prints, dangerous and crazy, and space to roam about in, let there also be rollicking ponies and peacefully baa-ing sheeps to co-occupy that space because there might as well be even if their presence cannot alter the outcome of the story one seems to be writing or being written by, it is altogether more pleasant that way.
Children's book author spends time in Irish countryside with her dead lover, her former lover, her former lover's teenage daughter, her doppelgänger, and her asshole beta husband played my boy Odo from DS9. She is slowly driven mad. J.K. Rowling: Origins.
Chills/Thrills: Altman riffs on Bergman and the spooky atmospherics and sounds of old country house and Irish landscape.
Gore/Ownage: a shotgun blast and knife to the chest, but both are imaginary so they don't really count. One really gnarly body/dummy effect falling off a rocky cliff though.
Horniness: The movie begins with Susanna York getting menacing phone calls implying Odo is cheating on her, but the film pulls the rug out from under you by revealing she's been pulling side dick on the reg.
“what did you do that for? you could have killed me.”
“again?”
robert altman’s images is a dream laced psycho disturbance from the female perspective. the film illustrates the fragmented psyche of a children’s author, cathryn, whose increasingly unhinged state impels her to a homicidal rampage. we begin with ominous phone calls harassing our protagonist, blowing her into a full-fledged nervous breakdown. desperate to flee the noise, cathryn and her husband resort to their secluded country home where her psychosis worsens and a range of delphic mysteries follow. in addition to cathryn’s alienation spiraling into paranoia, we eventually discover the guilt of her acrimonious past, spilling out in hallucinatory ramblings. the predatory men around her, interchangeable as her mental state…
This is not an Altman that seems to receive nearly as much attention as some of his other work—which perhaps isn’t surprising, given that it was sandwiched between (and therefore probably eclipsed by) two of his irrefutable masterpieces—but I was pretty taken with it. It’s an unsettling psychological thriller about a children’s author named Cathryn, who slowly loses her mind while staying at a remote Irish retreat with her husband. Travelling up from their flash London apartment to this idyllic rural spot, Cathryn hopes that she can settle her mind and focus on completing her next book, but doing so only seems to unearth darker memories—of past events and old dalliances—that she’d sooner prefer to forget. She starts to hear…
Probably the most beautifully shot film of all time to feature the late, great René Auberjonois getting jimmy tapped.
