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Countdown – 1967 Altman
- It doesn’t rewrite the book on Robert Altman, Robert Duvall or
James Caan by any stretch but it is a solid little film- rests somewhere outside
the top 20 of 1967
- It was Altman’s first feature in 10 years (second overall after
1957’s The Delinquents (I haven’t
seen)). He had worked in tv and documentaries since—shorts, too. Apparently
Warners Brothers didn’t think much of this and locked him off the lot after
seeing the finished product (they specifically hated his overlapping dialogue (since
has become his trademark)). I’m not positive but I believe they altered the
finished product. I don’t think there’s a top 10 film quality in here anyways.
- Hard to see James Caan and Robert Duvall (both solid here)
sparring with each other and not think of Sonny and Tom Hagen in The Godfather which would come 5 years
later.
- Altman’s breakthrough, MASH,
is actually his fourth film- That Cold
Day in the Park is between (haven’t seen that either)
- Timely- 18 months before the actual moon landing
- Authenticity seems to be the main goal here from Altman and it
is a success—there’s the authentic simulation opening. Smart conversation and
debate between politicians and NASA (involved in making of the film) and the PR
department on sending a military man to the moon and the implications of that
- Another endeavor towards authenticity- a character named “Gus”-
in the space program in 1968- captures the 1960’s polo shirts, haircuts, look
at the party
- Believable motivation of 5-6 characters at least- intelligent
but not exceptional
- Mark Murphy in the cast – a part of MASH, McCabe, and Nashville
- It’s nothing like his work in the 1970’s but there’s a fair
amount of people talking over each other in arguments with the overlapping dialogue
- A great transition edit shot at Caan throws a pop fly (playing
baseball catch with son) and it gets lost in the sun
- The dedication to authenticity get a little much in time—8 minutes
on Caan and Duvall arguing about the temperature in his suit—accurate, sure—
but too much
- Crazy to see such a humorless film from Altman—bad dialogue in
places like “he was never much of a napper”- ugh
- It does look like we’re on the moon at the end- nice set
- A sobering ending on the moon- open, a bit dire, thoughtful
- Recommend
Drake2020-03-31T16:27:06-04:00
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Altman was fired by the studio before Post-production in this film:
From Wikipedia:
Altman was fired as director of the film for delivering footage that featured actors talking over each other; it was so unusual for that time that studio executives considered it incompetence rather than an attempt to make scenes more realistic. He had finished filming and was preparing to begin the editing process when he received a call from Bill Conrad, then executive producer at Warner Brothers:
“He told me, ‘Don’t come to the studio, they won’t let you through the gates’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, Jack Warner saw your dailies and he said, ‘That fool has actors talking at the same time.’ And I had to drive up to the gate, and there was a cardboard box with all this stuff from my desk, which the guard handed to me. I was not allowed in the studio. And they cut the picture for kids.”[2]
As a result of Altman’s dismissal, the film’s ending was changed. “I left it ambiguous–the guy was probably going to die on the moon…He goes off in one direction, and the camera pans back and reveals the beacon is in the opposite direction. That was how I ended it.”
Overlapping dialogue went on to be a signature of Altman’s style. In the documentary Altman, the director explains that he was “just trying to get the illusion of reality”.
[…] Countdown – Altman […]
Have you seen Brian’s Song(1971)?
Isn’t Countdown a 1968 movie?
@Hashan— I do not believe so. debuted in 1967 in the UK it looks like