Susannah York in “Images” (1972)
You probably have not seen this film, even if you are a Robert Altman fan. It never received a normal commercial release in America. Some time later it was reported that the film’s original negative was burned by Columbia Pictures. Accidentally. Maybe. Director Altman himself expressed great surprise that a print was obtained by the Cleveland Cinematheque for an Altman retrospective in 2001!
Even if you love Altman’s films (I do), you may well hate this film (I do). I found it to be confusing and as dull as dishwater. My colleague, the late Tuna, also hated it and described it as follows:
“Images (1972) was a total mystery to me after watching it. Thank goodness there was a featurette on the DVD with Writer/Director Robert Altman. I learned that we are seeing life through the eyes of a schizophrenic (Susannah York). Nothing we see in the movie can be assumed to be real, but she may be married, writing a children’s book about unicorns, and staying in a vacation home with her husband. When she is not using voice-over to recite the book she is writing, she is having encounters with herself, her French lover who dies in an airplane crash, and other men. This is high on the list of films I will never see again.”
Wow, I would not have thought there were other people who remembered “The Shout” besides HUGE Tim Curry fans.
Like huge Alan Bates fans?
I saw “The Shout” in the theaters too and liked it a lot. It was based on a Robert Graves story, and had kind of an Edgar Allen Poe feel to it.
I saw it a an art house movie theater in what must have been the early or mid 1980’s, because art house movie theaters changed fast after the VHS tape rental business got big. I remember nothing at all about it, which is a bad sign, because I can usually remember things about good movies, even from that long ago. And I can remember stuff about “Shout” which was another strange and confusing movie from about the same time. That film had the same thing going for it as “Images” – Susannah York undressed. Yet somehow it was a better movie.
I think The Shout was weird, but engrossing. Images was weird, but as for attention-sustaining … not so much.