Few directors in recent American film history have gone through as many career ups and downs as Robert Altman did. Following years of television work, the rambunctious midwesterner set out on his own as a feature film director in the late 1950s, but didn’t find his first major success until 1970, with the antiauthoritarian war comedy M*A*S*H.
After the success of 1975’s panoramic American satire Nashville, Altman once again delved into projects that were more challenging, especially the astonishing, complex, Bergman-influenced 3 Women (USA, 1977, 124′)
Presented at SIFF, the film 3 Women follows the story of three women of different ages, social classes, temperaments, and backgrounds that come together with the power of water. In Robert Altman’s kaleidoscopic masterpiece, the passage from the blue lagoon of a hydrotherapy clinic to the empty swimming pool of a secluded housing complex – a canvas for the representation of a rehearsal for the Apocalypse – is a reflecting maze leading to the unfathomable depths of female psyche.
