This time around we tackle the way Altman's process and worldview effected his famous use of lengthy zoom-ins and zoom-outs. We touch on a glut of films and side-topics, (hopefully) befitting the master of meandering ensemble narratives.
Altman’s multilayered works reveled in thematic dissonance, spontaneously developing scenes, and a structural shagginess uncommon to an auteur of his stature. Aiming to find unity in his filmography and to articulate his ineffable iconoclasm, we take on one of the most distinct stylistic trademarks, allowing our gaze to travel as freely as his gently probing camera.
In this episode, we discuss:
What a zoom and a zoom lens is, and how Altman’s use of it is unique
The impact of Altman’s distanced camera on his actors’ performances.
The relative absence of character POV shots in Altman’s cinema and the potential implications for his process.
How deference to his collaborators resulted in peaks and valleys, but nonetheless resulted in a filmography with one-of-a-kind idiosyncrasy.
The dominance of texture and distance over depth and immersion and how this inverts the norm in Hollywood cinema.
Additional resources:
John Belton’s essay The Bionic Eye: Zoom Esthetics, which Devan mentions in the episode, can be read here.
Nashville - A long zoom into Lily Tomlin’s character probes a mysteriously ambivalent response to her paramour’s performance.
The Long Goodbye - This radically covered scene uses unpredictable and constant zooms and dollies to create a whirlpool of tension, spinning and closing in and getting us “all turned around” just like John Huston’s Hemingway-esque alcoholic character.
MASH - Altman’s parody of da Vinci’s Last Supper is disassembled by a slow zoom in on a character’s mock-suicide communion.
Secret Honor - Nixon’s erratic mood swings both push the camera’s zooming eye back and pull it in.
Nashville - Both enlarging the scope of the wreckage and minimizing the pretentious improvised prose of the impostor journalist