Film director studying engineering: Who is Robert Altman?

Altman gained importance with his strong directorial characteristics, his attitude that shattered established beliefs, and his opposition to the clichés of Hollywood cinema.

By William James Published on 20 Şubat 2023 : 17:06.
Film director studying engineering: Who is Robert Altman?

American film director. He gained importance with his attitude against Hollywood filmmaking. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied engineering at the University of Missouri. Upon the outbreak of World War II, he entered the Air Force as a pilot and participated in various combats. After leaving the army, he wrote articles for various magazines, made interviews, and wrote radio plays. He made his way into movies in 1957. After his first films, he directed serials and television plays for TV for a long time. After a ten-year hiatus, he returned to thematic films. He won the first prize at the MASH (Entertainment on the Front) Cannes Festival, which he shot in 1970 and had great success.

Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a five-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director and is considered an enduring figure from the New Hollywood era.

Altman started his career by making documentaries about various industrial projects. His first themed feature film in 1957, Delinquents, was a small-budget film that he wrote, directed, and produced. After co-producing the semi-documentary film The James Dean Story, he was involved in TV series for a long time. He became the acclaimed director of the TV series Combat and Bus Stop. He returned to thematic films with the movie Countdown. His relationship with the producers was not going well, causing major cuts in his films. However, when Cephede Entertainment, which he shot in 1970, was an extraordinary success both in terms of the box office and the criticisms he received, he was accepted as a good cinema director. In this movie, which emphasizes the meaninglessness of the war with the crazy behaviors of the two doctors in the Korean War, which destroyed the general values, the new technique that Altman used in the sound recording especially attracted attention.

Robert Altman takes place in the history of cinema as one of the most important figures of American independent cinema and New Hollywood movement, both with his style of performing cinema and the structure of his films. Throughout the 1950s and the first half of the 60s, Hollywood's starting point was the New Hollywood movement, also known as the New American Wave, which brought its renaissance to North American cinema in the late 60s. . The Hollywood studio system, which was obviously banal, went through an overhaul in order to regain its lost young audience; thus, young directors and more contradictory stories were given a chance, films with less studio control and relatively low budgets emerged. As of this period, the understanding that studio names and star actors are at the forefront of Hollywood cinema has been interrupted, and the directors have begun to be read. Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, John Carpenter, and many more enjoyed their heyday in New Hollywood, which continued into the mid-eighties.

Robert Altman, one of the pioneers of the movement, has been an example that succeeded in paving the way for his successors. Altman has constantly strayed between studios and conflict and reconciliation, making it possible for his films to be made by taking advantage of the studio's vulnerabilities.

1991: A Spectacular Return to the Cinema

Altman, who is often called a low-budget filmmaker by referring to the box office revenues of his works, emerged with two works that were very popular with the audience in the early 90s. With The Player (1991), he erected a sad monument to Hollywood with the story of a young filmmaker who made his dream career possible despite the murder. The fact that about 70 big Hollywood stars acted as extras at a party in this movie added vitality to the movie. Short Cuts (1993) was once again an insightful, unmasking, and at the same time disgraceful panorama of American society. Seeing himself as a separate person from everyone else, Altman managed to rank among the best Hollywood directors for the second time since the end of the 60s, with this film in which events flow side by side and intertwined. He cemented his reputation with the film Prit-â-porter (1994), in which he satirized the international fashion world. Kansas City (1996), Gun (1997), The Gingerbread Man (1998), Cookie's Fortune (1999), and Another City, Not My Own (1999) are among Altman's last films.

WORKS (MAIN):

The Delinquents, 1957;

The James Dean Story (with George), 1957,

Countdown, 1968;

The Cold Day in the Park, 1969;

A.S.H. 1970;

The Long Goodbye, 1973;

Nashville, 1975;

Three Women, 1977;

A Wedding, 1978;

A Perfect Couple.