Robert Altman is arguably most famous for his large ensemble dramas yet, for me, his most interesting work can often be found in his smaller and more experimental pictures like 3 Women, Secret Honor and the startling and criminally underseen, Images. Inspired by Bergman’s Persona and sharing a fair few similarities with Polanski’s Repulsion, Images is a film about fractured realities, repressed sexuality and extreme psychosis.

Susannah York stars as Cathryn, a children’s writer who is terrorised by phantoms, or so she thinks, as she attempts to write her new novel. Schizophrenic horror is nothing new in cinema (not even back in ‘72) but to Altman’s credit, whilst there are clear influences, he very much makes it his own. For…

One of the things I found refreshing about Robert Altman's Images was the fact that he doesn't play the is-she-or-isn't-she-crazy game that has become standard in today's psychological thrillers; Susannah York's character is pretty clearly in the throes of schizophrenia. So the viewer is left to parse out what is and isn't real, instead. Same type of movie, different flavor.

It's also a bit of a departure for Altman in that, while there is a quite a bit of dialog, it doesn't have the same manic, boisterous quality that is usually the case for him. He does manage to cram quite a few visual motifs in, but the obvious ones (mirrors, cameras) tend to work very well in the film,…

Possibly Altman's only horror film if one should consider it horror. Whilst the film is not scary per se other than John Williams unnerving score being plucked straight from that genre, it does carry main elements that make a horror movie (especially in the last act).

Suffice to say however my intuitions were correct in assuming this film to be a poor man's version of Polanski's Repulsion. Stylistically they are very different with Altman's film being more straight and narrow other than its dreamlike sequences of doppelgangers and past sexual forays. Polanski's is more aesthetically charged, more authentic and more horrifying ultimately being the better film.

I admired much of the film including the incorporation of Cathryn's past lovers and…

Altman sure knew how to draw out compelling and eerie performances from women, be it Sandy Dennis in That Cold Day in the Park or Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule in 3 Women, but Susannah York's performance in Images goes beyond the realm of eerie. Images as a whole is beyond eerie. It's arguably Altman's only true horror film, full of psychological ghosts, but most of his films have always had a touch of menace.

Smaller in scale than most Altman films, Images is a tightly-crafted shocker with weaving reality and unreality. Absolutely nothing can be taken at face value. There's a moment when Cathryn (Susannah York) is standing on the edge of a cliff looking down at…

Images (Robert Altman, 1972) 9/10

Altman's study of madness is strongly influenced by Polanski's "Repulsion" and Bergman's "Persona" but has none of their claustrophobia. Instead the story is played out not only inside a farmhouse but also in the wide open spaces of the Irish countryside (beautifully shot by Vilmos Zsigmond). A lonely writer (Susannah York) of children's stories hallucinates about sex and death while writing a new book holed up in her country house. She interacts with three men - her husband (Rene Auberjonois), a former lover (Marcel Bozzuffi) who years before died in a plane crash and an amorous neighbour (Hugh Mallais) who has the hots for her. Reality and fiction intermingle as Altman borrows shock effects from…

"But there are no palm trees on the street, and dishwasher gives back no images." I love Nina Simone and all, though a reference to one of her songs might be too fitting for a film about a woman with dangerous mental and emotional instability. Hey, this upper-class housewife might not be schizophrenic, as much as she is just driven mad by being an upper-class housewife. ...No, she's schizophrenic, because just taking your spouse on a vacation in an isolated cottage has never been a bad enough idea in movies. You'd have thought that this would be the final word on that psychological thriller/horror cliché, because the nifty thing about the delusional protagonist is that it allows all bases in…

Robert Altman's Images was made during Altman's greatest period. He had already made That Cold Day in the Park, MASH, Brewster McLoud and McCabe & Mrs Miller. He was about to make The Long Goodbye, California Split, Thieves Like Us and Nashville. All in a period from 1969 to 1975. Other than maybe Francis Ford Coppola or Hal Ashby, no-filmmaker had a better 1970s.

Images is part of his informal Ingmar Bergman-knock off trilogy, along with the neglected, brilliant That Cold Day in the Park and 3 Women. It shares their forthright, if surreal, psycho-sexual thrills. If 3 Women is about the nature of identity of the self, then Images is about the nature of identity of others.

Images is a…