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Images

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4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have not seen IMAGES on DVD so I cannot honestly comment on the DVD's quality, but I saw this film last year at a film archive screening, and I have to say I was genuinely freaked out by it. Again, to be honest, a number of my friends found it to be a bit silly, but I was genuinely disturbed by it, in much the same way that I was disturbed by ONIBABA, ROSMARY'S BABY, DON'T LOOK NOW, and DEAD RINGERS. Putting the spectator in the position of a mentally unbalanced person (a la DR. CALIGARI), IMAGES masterfully creates the effect of being trapped within an unstable subjectivity. By the way, the acting and the cinematography are flawless...

Susannah York gives a fantastic performance as Cathryn, a wealthy English woman who may be mentally unstable. Alone in her home writing a children's book, she is interrupted by the apparent appearance of an old lover. Or is she? When her husband (Rene Aberjonois) arrives home and sees her distress, he whisks her away to their country home - a strangely drab cottage that seems to have been spray-painted black and gray. Her deterioration and inability to distinguish fact and fantasy continue unabated, particularly when her husband has to return to the city. What happens from there is highly open to interpretation.

"Images" is a strange, unsettling film, even for director Robert Altman. The initial pace is glacier-like and will undoubtedly leave many viewers bored and frustrated. However, you need to stick with it, as the film gradually gains momentum and climaxes with almost unbearable tension. The film has been compared to Roman Polanski's "Repulsion"; that film is superior to "Images," but the comparison is not completely inappropriate. Both chronicle a young woman's descent in madness when left alone; however, "Images" is less chilling and somewhat more convoluted, although with many merits of its own.

Filmed on location in Ireland, the film looks absolutely stunning, and the cinematography is so superior that it alone merits a viewing of "Images." Altman's direction is also first-rate and masterful, so much so that it somewhat detracts from the film - I was sometimes too busy watching his directing flourishes to pay attention to small plot details. Overall, "Images" is an intriguing movie-going experience that will likely appeal to many fans of Altman and viewers who appreciate films that can be obscure in nature.

This is the most exciting psychological thriller ever made,I thought.Director Robert Altman's unique style on this film magnificiently presents the see into tormented woman'madness, same as Altman's other film like "that cold day in the park('69)"and "three women('77)". The music on this film(by John Williams) is still more exciting, espesially for the percussion of Stomu Yamash'ta(the famous japanese percussionist known by Red Buddah Theatre of '70s).To my regret, this film isn't released on theatre in Japan.

Robert Altman's "Images" is a powerful and bewildering film. It's ability to throw the viewer completely numerous times throughout it's running time is something I have seldom encountered before while watching a psychological thriller. You'll need to have all your wits about you to appreciate what you see here.

The plot, as written on paper, is not complicated. Susannah York plays Cathryn, a married woman who seems rather highly strung and nervous. Together with her husband she goes to a remote house in the country to write a children's book. Once there, she gradually begins to lose her grip on reality. That's all I can really be sure about, because the viewer lives Cathryn's experience as fully as the character does. Throughout the movie, events happen that can't possibly be explained as rational or real, and the only possible explanation is that Cathryn is hallucinating. A film that does this without ever making it clear whether the audience it supposed to be able to work out what is reality and what is a dream, is audacious indeed. I watched, baffled, as Cathryn encountered various people who may or may not have actually been there, saw her own double moving around the landscape, received mocking telephone calls, and had whole conversations with someone in the room who then suddenly became someone else. It took the first 30 minutes of watching to become accustomed to how slickly the film tosses you between the various states of reality and unreality. Once I loosened up and started to just go with it, it was easier...oddly enough, I was mirroring the emotions of the main character, as she too realises that if she can't shake the nightmare off, she's going to have to just deal with it...watch the movie to see how she does!

Although disorientating, thanks to the overall quality of the film, it becomes a fairly gripping experience to actually watch. You really never know what is going to happen next, or what thing Cathryn has just experienced is going to turn out to have been imagined. And not in some corny, cliche-d way like a friend saying "But so-and-so couldn't have just been here - he died two weeks ago!". It's all much more subtle than that. As films that tamper with your perception of what is reality and what is not go, there are few other works that can rival this. It's been compared to Polanski's "Repulsion", and I think the comparison is fair, but "Images" manages to be an even more immersive experience than that film. Susannah York never hits a false note as the troubled Cathryn, and all the other actors do well, acting naturally and understatedly, especially Cathryn Harrison as the teenage daughter of one of the (few) other characters.

By the time the credits roll, you may feel terminally confused, speechless, or even cheated, but there's no doubt in my mind that you'll remember it as a fascinating 95 minute experience. This film is a significant contribution to the cinema as a whole, and quite a remarkable acheivement.

The first thing that I think Altman fans will notice when they watch this is that this is the only 70's Altman film that takes place in another country. And that other country, Ireland, is in many ways the star of this film, or at least Ireland as it is seen through the lens of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.

The other star of the film is the musical score. John Williams did the musical score but there is also a "sound" credit given to Stomu Yamashta who is referred to as a creator of sound sculptures.

The cinematography and the music (which sounds, at times, like Japanese horror film music) combine to give this film more atmosphere than all of Altman's other films combined. For a film with a comparable atmospheric setting think Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS or Skolimowski's THE SHOUT.

Also the writing credits are divided between Robert Altman and Susannah York. Altman wrote the story but York wrote the story within the story called "In Search of Unicorns" and this Hobbit-like fantasy story about a medieval tribe searching for unicorns was actually published. In the Altman film York's character, Catherine, is writing this fantasy story and we can see that she is very good at allowing herself to completely float away from reality. Plus the Irish landscape that surrounds the cottage, populated by sheep and shetland ponies, and the cottage itself, seem more fantastical than real. Its an excellent setting for a story about psychoses (a person who experiences a break from reality).

As Altman films go this is in a different category altogether from his usual ensemble pieces. This is the film he made after McCabe and Mrs. Miller and, in some ways, it picks up where that film left off. Imagine McCabe and Mrs. Miller told entirely through Mrs. Miller's opium-induced vision and you get some idea where Images comes from and where Altman is going.

On the surface it seems that there is really very little story at all in Images and yet when you begin to study this film you realize that everything is in its proper place, and that this character, Catherine, has been thoroughly imagined by Altman/York. The atmospheres, both the interiors of the remote country house and the exterior landscapes, are alluring and hypnotic. The John Williams music seems to stress the actual reality while the harsh and dissonant Yamashta soundscapes stress that something within this landscape is disjointed, disconnected, disturbed. This is the kind of place you would dream of living but it also seems to be a place that is so isolated from the mainstream of society that it requires its inhabitants to foster an intense fantasy life. Catherine's psychoses seems to either be caused or aggravated by the landscape itself.

The fact that this film has not been seen for so many years just adds to its almost mystical allure. The year it was released it did garner a couple of awards at Cannes (an acting award for York and a Golden Palm for Altman) so it was appreciated in 1972. For many years this film was thought to have been burned in a fire, and then a copy was found in a rarity shop. Its reappearance after so many years is a very unexpected surprise and i think that is the response most people will have to the film itself as well. One difficulty that this film presents is how to categorize it. It has elements of fantasy, psychological thriller, and horror. The point of originality here I think is that everything we know about this character, Catherine, all comes from a very unstable source, Catherine herself. The unreliability of all that we see makes the film particularly disturbing and particularly effective. More conventional psychological horror films eventually allow us some way of verifying just what was real and just what was coming from the haunted character's psyche. But we really never depart from the main character's psyche in this film and so we never get anything like distance or closure.

Plot details below (so read no further if you haven't seen the film yet).

The plot in a nutshell: Catherine is married to Hugh. While Hugh is at work one night and Catherine is home writing her children's story she begins receiving phone calls from an unidentified source who claims to have information about her husband and another woman. Apparently (and I stress the "apparently" because nothing is certain in this film) Catherine in years past was something of a philanderer herself and in her present life she has a habit of talking to her ex-lovers who she is pretty certain, but not altogether certain, are not really there. Certain clues are dropped that tell us that one reason Catherine may have been unfaithful is because she desperately wants to have a child but she may be barren (and this may partially explain her obession with children's books and children and all may stem from Catherine's own childhood traumas which are intertwined with her family cottage that she and her husband now live in). The dramatic tension of the story is Catherine's attempt to overcome her psychic imbalance and determine once and for all what is hallucination and what is real. But just when we think she has found her psychic equilibrium there is one more surprise.

I love the cinematography and the music and the splendid atmospheres this film offers us; the story is also structured with incredible care. There are clues scattered everywhere but Altman seems to enjoy leaving things in a state of disarray. One of the visual metaphors of the film is the jigsaw puzzle and this film in many ways is just that. This film will appeal to fans of psychological films like Bergman's PERSONA, Polanski's REPULSION, DePalma's SISTERS & Altman's own 3 WOMEN.

In addition to the psychoses the film also has a supernatural element to it that may appeal to some and that made me think of the strange flashbacks and flash forwards in Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW. Some of the most powerful scenes in the film have Catherine viewing herself from afar and these scenes emphasize Catherines growing disconnectedness to the world and herself; as the film goes on the other Catherine gets closer and closer. These are frightening scenes precisly because we do not know if it will be a good thing or a bad thing if Catherine's parallel worlds come together.

If you're not a person who feels the need to rationally understand all you see, or, if that is precisely the kind of experience that you seek, then you may enjoy this element of the film.

For me the pieces of this puzzle come together this way: Everything Catherine sees is an emanation from her own psyche. Catherine's childhood was spent in the cottage where she now writes. As a child she was left alone for days at a stretch and it was then that she began the habit of creating imaginary companions. Later, when she became an adult, she wanted to create a real companion by having a child of her own. Since she could not have a child of her own she had to settle for male companions that made demands on her that she did not want to or could not fulfill and thus she desires to kill them off in order to preserve the sanctity and order of her imaginary realm. In addition to the male lovers (who both have French names, Rene and Marcel, and this contributes to our wandering if they are just products of Catherine's imagination) Catherine imagines a young girlfriend, Susannah, that also may or may not be just another imagined figure. Catherine seems to prefer her fantasy world to the real one but the tragedy and horror of her life is that she can no longer tell the difference between the two. Who is real? Who is merely imagined? We and she never really can say.

"Images" is another great movie from the master of the living paintings, Robert Altman. It is a brilliant, scary, beautiful, and very disturbing journey inside one woman's mind that was leaving her as the movie progressed. What we saw was not a ghost story but a very real descent to the world of nightmares and monsters that would not stop torturing the struggling and guilty mind for a second.

Susannah York as Cathryn, a young writer who tries to finish a children's book in a remote country home is simply breathtaking. She carries the movie (which only has five characters) almost by herself and being present in every scene, she is equally sympathetic and frightening. In his interview on DVD, Altman mentioned that he had started making the movie in Milan with Sophia Lauren. As much as I admire Lauren, I don't see anyone other than York playing Cathryn. While watching her, I kept thinking of her Alice in Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Alice, one of the participants and victims of a killing dance marathon, loses her mind by the end of the movie and the scene where she breaks down mentally, was heartbreaking. Altman himself reminded me of the witches from Shakespeare's Macbeth that would throw all kinds of ingredients in their cauldron. The director mentioned how he would add the new details to the script as the real life situations changed: York was writing the children's book about Unicorns at the time - we can hear the long parts of her book in the background. I am not too crazy about the book but the idea seems to be brilliant. York had informed Altman that she could not make the movie because she was pregnant but Altman just decided to add her pregnancy to the script. There is some dry humor in the movie - all five characters have the first names of the actors who played them: Susannah played Cathryn and young Cathryn Harrison plays a girl named Susannah, Rene Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi, and Hugh Millais played three men in Cathryn's life - Hugh, the husband, Rene - the neighbor, and Marcel, her dead lover (who was quite alive for a dead man, at least in her memory). John Williams wrote an absolutely unforgettable score for the film (it is not a melody, rather some strange, persistent, scary, and disturbing sounds - very experimental at the time, it is still quite unusual).

As for its visual site - the film that was made during one wet November in Ireland is brilliantly dark and hypnotizingly beautiful. I am jealous of everyone who was able to see it in all its glory on the big screen at the theater - it would be impossible to forget.

Images is a long-lost classic that, thankfully, has been rescued from oblivion. I remember seeing it when I was still a teenager and thinking it a work of art. Susannah York proves, once again, that she was one of the great 60s actresses---nervous and intelligent, and full of that fragile sensibility that charcterised the time. Loved her in Sebastian, but this was her film, the film that really gave her a chance to show what she could do. The book that she is writing throughout the film and that forms the accompaniment to her madness was actually written by York herself. Serious and adult, this and Three Women is Altman's pinnacle as an artist, if not as an entertainer.

Photographed by Vilmos Zsigmund. with an impressive score by John Williams, this is one of great films of the period. It easily stands alongside Five Easy Pieces. American cinema was competing with Europe on its own terms, at this time, and holding its own---but then it all came crashing in when marketing took over and cinema lost its soul for good. (Thank Star Wars, and Jaws and similar blockbusters.)

Those Seventies were characterized by the distortion of the reality. The serious physhic fracture suffered by a woman in his early thirties was admirably portrayed by Susannah York (Jan 9, 1939- January 16, 2011) who won the Cannes Festival as Best Actress due this role, certainly one of the twenty top performances of the decade.

The seventies was the most daring decade respect this issue. Films like A woman under influence, Cries and Whispers, Someone flew over the cuckoo's nest, the discrete charm of the bourgeoise, Sybil, The tennant, Scarecrow, Equus, Don't look now, Last tango In Paris, Il portiere di notte, Catch 22, Mr. Klein, The clockwork orange, Aguirre the wrath of God, Life of marionets, The marriage of Maria Braun, The lost honor of Katharine Bloom or The tantalizing of Franz Blum seem to confirm the phenomen was global.

Watch it without reserves. It won't let you down.

I have a lot of trouble with films featuring unreliable narrators. While I understand that films about a character with a frayed sense of reality need to be as chaotic and fractured as their psyche, they tend to alienate me emotionally. Robert Altman's "Images" does do those things, of course, but what makes this a step above similarly themed films like, Persona, Black Swan or The Double Life of Veronique: The Criterion Collection is that it's rather subtle. Films featuring a character confronting their double are usually fraught with ham-fisted symbolism and overly obvious motifs. I'm not saying "Images" is without these things but Altman has the finesse to blend them, more or less, gracefully into the film. With the help of fluid cinematography by the master Vilmos Zsigmond, a dynamic and precise performance from Susannah York and a haunting score by John Williams, "Images" is able to transcend the normal pitfalls of this microcosm of a genre and remain a serious piece of artistic expression.

I highly recommend the film to viewers who like a good doppelgänger story.

Also, if you are a fan of the maverick director Robert Altman, than this is an absolute must see- it's one of his strongest and most confident visions.

Robert Altman's freaky fairy tale IMAGES (MGM) disappeared shortly after it's 1972 release. Susannah York is a married children's author who may or may not be a schizophrenic adulteress fantasizing about being pregnant and killing her "ghosts". Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond perfectly captures the evanescent Irish setting. Especially haunting is Stomu Yamashta's brilliant sound design. Altman's most original -- perhaps best -- film.