The latest in our series of writers highlighting underappreciated films sees a recommendation for Robert Altman’s dreamlike 70s horror
When he completed Images, in 1971, Robert Altman thought to himself: “Everyone is just going to flip over this film. It’s going to be the greatest discovery since hash!” As he later acknowledged, that did not turn out to be the case – to the extent that few people even remember Images today. Partly that’s because this strange, elegant psychological horror doesn’t feel like a Robert Altman film at all. Think of Altman and you think of his orchestrated ensemble pieces – Nashville, Short Cuts, The Player, Gosford Park – or his earlier, New
Hollywood genre reinventions: McCabe And Mrs Miller or The Long Goodbye. Between those last two came Images, set in a remote
Irish country house, and closer in spirit to Bergman’s Persona or Polanski’s Repulsion.
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