California Split (Altman, 1974): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.45pm
This film (also screening on January 22nd) is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank. You can find full details of the season here.
Robert Altman made a number of groundbreaking films in the 1970s (MASH,
The Long Goodbye, Nashville and McCabe and Mrs Miller). This one has
slipped through the net but is no less innovative and is a must-see for
anyone interested in the director's work.
Elliott Gould (slumbering through the decade in his inimitable style)
and George Segal are excellent in the lead roles. It's funny and
poignant and undoubtedly the best film I've seen on the subject of
gambling as the pair take the well-worn road from casino to racetrack to
card hall, ending up in Reno.
Chicago Reader review:
Robert Altman's masterful 1974 study of the psychology of the
compulsive gambler. Elliott Gould, loose, jocular, and playful, and
George Segal, neurotic, driven, and desperate, are really two halves of
the same personality as they move from bet to bet, game to game, until
they arrive for the big showdown in Reno. As in all Altman films,
winning is losing; and the more Altman reveals, in his oblique,
seemingly casual yet brilliantly controlled way, the more we realize
that to love characters the way Altman loves his, you have to see them
turned completely inside out.
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