Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

christopher-underwood I happened to be in Paris when this was released and saw it there in a brand new arts cinema, the likes of which I had hitherto never experienced. The film too was something of a surprise but I remember wallowing in the experience and being stunned both by the wonderful Irish landscape scenes and the vigorous and varied performance from Susannah York. It is one of those films from the late 60s/early 70s I've been a bit loathe to watch again in case they do not measure up to the image I have in mind. No worries here, some may not be happy with the reality of the 'unreal' scenes but it still looks good, York's performance is even better than I remember and if the story isn't quite as convincing as Repulsion, it is a very good watch indeed. So, if you are interested in what Altman did between McCabe & Mrs Miller and The Long Goodbye, this is it. What a fine trio of films.

Rodrigo Amaro Robert Altman doing a psychological horror film. Hmm, okay, seemed interesting. After all, the creator of "MASH" and "The Player" was talented and courageous enough to helm a film of almost every genre available, with limited resources and presenting his own method of cinema: free of rules, realistic, artistic and almost always fascinating despite the lack of audience for the majority of his works. Drama, comedy, sci-fi, musical, thriller, film-noir...you name it: he made it all. Unfortunetaly "Images" isn't the kind of film where I can say I was enthralled or deeply invested. It was too much on and off, with wonderful sequences put together with prolonged dreary moments that managed to obscure its qualities. The final scene comes and you wondered how simplistic and off-putting most of the film were. Susannah York plays Cathyrn, a children's book author in need of peace and quiet to finish her latest work, and those solitude moments will be find at a country home along with her husband (Rene Auberjonois). Well, not really. As the days move, she sees strange visions that disturb her peace and sanity, or the least of that she still has. From strange phone calls telling her husband is having an affair to appearances from a ghostly former lover (the always effective Marcel Bozzuffi); strange noises and occurrences; and the odd behavior of a neighbor/friend of the family (Hugh Millais) who happens to be a former lover of Catheryn and who still feels a deep attraction to her, so peculiar and intrusive to the point of the man seducing her while the clueless husband is on the room next to them. Are those visions and scenarios real or imagined? And what are they're meaning to the woman? Sane or going crazy? We go to movies like this to find out how it all gets together. The problem with "Images" is that, after years of watching horror films or even psychological thrillers one gets easily fed up in seeing clichés after clichés. I was remind of the brilliant "Repulsion". Some parts brought me minor memories from Louis Malle's surrealistic tale "Black Moon" - it gets even more coincidental that Cathryn Harrison (she plays Millais' daughter and Catheryn's only ally) stars on both Malle and Altman films. The visual, the concept, the presentation...it all feels made before - but you can argue that "Black Moon" in that case was the copy film because it got released later, but the order when you watch is how it affects the experience or the enjoyment. Sure, it's edgy, filled with suspense and shock, Vilmos Szigmond's careful cinematography and John Williams' appropriate (though not memorable) score are first-rate. It thrills. However, I always think that a horror film can only succeed if the drama is good. Otherwise, you're just wanting for everyone to die or get killed because there's not enough room to make you invested in their story, in their problems. It must have a great dramatic element, with some life relevance or slightly believable. "Images" almost got there. It's easy to say that Altman was portraying a bigger-than-life idea of what schizophrenia might be with the duality of real vs. imagination, and the consequences it leads when those clash at each other with just one person having to deal with both sides, not knowing how to act or cope with their current reality. That's great drama. It only gets wronged and confused due to a mumbled presentation, that doesn't satisfy neither fully convince, and the whole children book narrated by York (her own real creations) were awfully distracting. The movie feels more concerned in terrifying than giving us a relatable story - and a movie has to be both. It helps a lot. The whole time I kept wondering how low in self-esteem Cathryn must have been to get involved with three misogynist, self-absorbed jerks. Instead of pouring the odd horrific elements from time to time, Altman should have insisted in developing little by little, just like he does in the menacing phone-call scene (that was genius!) than evolves but the drama keeps on real throughout. It was too bizarre seeing the ghost coming and going, then one face changing to another. If schizophrenia goes like that, and in such a hurry and state, then I guess the movie succeed in its portrayal. Another touch of genius from Altman is with the characters/actors names traded: Susannah plays Cathryn, Cathryn plays Susannah, Rene plays Hugh, Hugh plays Marcel and Marcel plays Rene. I'd like to be on this film set and see how communications worked between them - must have been hilarious specially if there's method actors involved. The performances? So and so, nothing so brilliant and York only got Best Actress in Cannes due to lack of good competition. Final verdict: a few years from now and I might rewatch it and find more rewarding qualities. As of now, it goes as one of Altman's most disappointing efforts but far from worst. 4/10

Eumenides_0 It's difficult to explain exactly what makes Robert Altman's Images so enticing. I've never enjoyed his style or the few movies I've watched by him. But this 1972 obscure movie fascinates me exactly because it looks nothing like a Robert Altman movie. It's more of a cross between Ingmar Bergman (Persona) and Roman Polanski (Repulsion), and shows that Altman could have been a completely different filmmaker if he had wanted.Susannah York plays Cathryn, an author of children's books who starts having hallucinations and erotic fantasies involving past lovers, including a dead one. Finding her troubled, her husband (played by Rene Auberjonois) takes her to Green Cove, an idyllic mansion in a beautiful valley. But rather than easing her mind, this desolate place, full of painful memories for ever, only stimulates her deteriorating imagination.There's not much more to the movie besides this, which is why I'm amazed at how fascinating and gripping it is. If the slow, painful mental collapse of a woman fascinates you, you should watch this disturbing movie. For all its simplicity, it's quite complex and unsettling in a mature way.Marcel Bozzuffi, Hugh Millais and the young Cathryn Harrison (who'd be in an even stranger movie three years later: Black Moon) give very good supporting performances.Complementing the movie is also John William's creepy, eerie, slightly dissonant score, the unsettling sounds created by Stomu Yamashta, and the cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond. It's a cliché to complain about what Oscars a movie should have been nominated for, but for me, more than John Williams, it's Zsigmond who deserved a nomination for his camera work here. The way he captures shadows, the way he shoots nature, showing it mysterious and menacing and at the same beautiful; the way it moves inside a room or across a landscape, contributes to what makes this movie exceptional.This is a masterpiece that deserves more recognition, and for lovers of weird, unusual cinema, it's obligatory watching.

tieman64 Robert Altman's generally thought of as a weak visualist, his films messy, shapeless and dialogue driven. This is not quite true. And even if it were, there has always been another side to Altman; films like "3 Women" and "Images" single him out as a strong surrealist, adept and spooky imagery and menacing atmosphere. Indeed, "Images" sometimes seems like it was ghost directed by Roman Polanski or Luis Bunuel.The plot? Cathryn and her husband Hugh spend a few days in a spooky country house. She suffers from delusional disorder, "images of past lovers" spontaneously popping into her head. Like Altman's "3 Women", there are hints of temporal displacement, characters merging and occupying the same spaces or conversing with little girls who may or may not be their own younger selves.Is Cathryn crazy? Are supernatural forces at work? Is her mind being consumed by guilt? Why not all three? Cathryn seems to have had an adulterous affair with a French man called Rene. He died in a plane crash but returns as an "image" to haunt her. Meanwhile, Cathryn's infidelity is personified as Marcel, a large brute of a man who constantly tries to force himself upon her. Meanwhile Marcel's wife, an unseen character who we know had affairs, has divorced him, but not before having a young child, a girl who is herself the splitting image of Cathryn.Continuing with the theme of images, Cathryn's husband is a photographer whilst she is an author. The film's soundtrack often consists of Cathryn narrating one of her books, the audience forced to conjure up images to the words she reads.So what are we to make of this? Cathryn and her husband are image-makers. Cathryn, because of her overactive imagination, imagines that her husband is having an affair. These thoughts, fuelled by her own past infidelities, attack her as "images". In order to restore her sanity, Cathryn thus murders her "image" of Rene and her "image" of Marcel. Finally cured, she drives to her husband before encountering an "image" of herself on the road. The implication is that Cathryn must now destroy her "image", confronting the paranoid source of these monsters. And so Cathryn pushes her own "image" off a cliff. With this symbolic suicide, she is now free. But we then learn that the final "image" was not a self-image at all. It was her husband whom Cathryn encountered and murdered on the road. And so the film ends with a reversal of the classic Hitchcock shower scene. Cathryn faces a deadly "image" of herself; she is the monster, her delusions fragments of her own warped persona.Altman hints at this by naming his 5 characters after the actors who play them. They're not only "images", but "composite images". Marcel Bozzuffi plays "Rene", but "Rene" is the name of actor Rene Auberjonois who plays "Hugh", "Hugh" being the first name of Hugh Millais, the actor who plays "Marcel". Similarly, Susannah York plays "Cathryn", whilst the actress Cathryn Harrison plays a "Susannah".8/10 – Eerily similar to "3 Women", this is essentially an art house thriller. The film seems to have inspired the end of Scorsese's "Taxi Driver", in which Travis Bickle famously sees himself in his car's rear view mirror. Altman's female psycho does this as well, complete with that familiar little audio zing.