Images (Altman, 1972): Roxy Bar and Screen, 7.30pm
This is a real treat. A very rare screening of a lost Robert Altman film.
Here is the introduction from the FilmBar70 club: Beautiful, haunting and very, very creepy, ‘Images’ deserves a place
in the pantheon of the utterly unnerving alongside such greats as ‘The
Shining’, ‘The Innocents’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’. Featuring a startling,
award-winning (Cannes ’72) performance by Susannah York, luminous
photography by Vilmos Zsigmond and an atypically atonal score from John
Williams, Altman’s long neglected work truly requires a resurgence.
York plays Cathryn, a children’s author embroiled in her latest opus.
When a series of enigmatic phone calls alluding to her husband’s
infidelity shakes her reverie, Cathryn finds herself beset by unwelcome
spectres from her past. As the barriers between the internal and the
external crumble, the solution she implements to lay her ghosts to rest
may prove more lethal than she could possibly conceive…
In addition to ‘Images’, we’ll be celebrating certain eruptive
performances given by actresses beyond the verge of a nervous breakdown.
From Lillian Gish to Isabelle Adjani, we’ll be lauding those ladies who
threw themselves immitigably into the abyss in a special pre-feature
Filmbar presentation.
And that’s not all, for El Diabolik will be on hand to summon the
World of the Psychotronic Soundtrack to baffle your senses and get you a
whirling…
Time Out review:
Underrated film about a lonely woman cracking up and suffering
disturbing hallucinations about sex and death. Unlike most of Altman's
movies, which parody and reinvent genres, Images stands rather in a loose trilogy with That Cold Day in the Park and 3 Women,
in its investigation of madness and its concentration upon a female
character. The fragmented style of the film, in which York's mental life
is portrayed as substantially as her 'real' life, might have become
pretentious; but the director controls things beautifully, proffering
credible biographical reasons for her inner disturbances, and borrowing
shock effects from the thriller genre to underline the terrifying nature
of her predicament. It's brilliantly shot by Vilmos Zsigmond
(wtihout a hint of psychedelic trickery in sight), superbly acted, and
lent extra menace by the sounds and music of, respectively, Stomu
Yamashta and John Williams.
Geoff Andrew
Here's the great FilmBar70 trailer.
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