A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Showing posts with label Nashville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nashville. Show all posts

Friday, September 5, 2025

Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

Ronee Blakley in Nashville

Cast: David Arkin, Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Timothy Brown, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, David Hayward, Michael Murphy, Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel, Cristina Raines, Bert Remsen, Lily Tomlin, Gwen Welles, Keenan Wynn, Elliott Gould, Julie Christie. Screenplay: Joan Tewkesbury. Cinematography: Paul Lohmann. Film editing: Dennis M. Hill, Sidney Levin. Music: Arlene Barnett, Jonnie Barnett, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Gary Busey, Juan Grizzle, Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel, Joe Raposo. 

Nashville hated Nashville. That's because it wasn't about them, but like most major movies of the '70s, from Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969) to Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), it was about American angst. I hadn't seen it since its release and as I did then, I found it deserved the critical hosannas for sheer audacity but was also exasperatingly inconsistent in achievement. The satire remains pungent, especially when it involves Geraldine Chaplin's clueless BBC reporter, constantly missing the point, stumbling over her own preconceptions, or desperately searching for metaphors as she tours a junkyard or a school bus lot. Some of the performances are great, especially Ronee Blakley's fragile diva, Michael Murphy's oily political advance man, Gwen Welles's clueless would-be singer, and Lily Tomlin's unappreciated wife. But although the great Barbara Harris gets her moment to shine late in the film, her character is poorly integrated, and Shelley Duvall is wasted in a role that has no point. The decision to have the actors write and perform their own songs was a mistake, especially in the case of Karen Black, who never comes across as a credible rival to Blakley's Barbara Jean. Still, the film serves its major purpose, to portray an America wrenched by post-Watergate anxiety as it prepares to celebrate its bicentennial. Nashville is bracketed by two songs, one asserting that "we must be doing something right to last 200 years," the other anxiously repeating "you may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me." What comes in between is apt demonstration of both premises.