Images

'Images'
original film poster
Directed by	Robert Altman
Produced by	Tommy Thompson
Written by	Robert Altman
Starring	Susannah York Rene Auberjonois Marcel Bozzuffi Cathryn Harrison
Music by	John Williams Stomu Yamashta
Studio	Hemdale Film Group Ltd.
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	November 1972 18 December 1972 November 5, 1975
Running time	101 min.
Language	English
Budget	$807,000 (estimated)

Images is a 1972 English language psychological thriller directed by Robert Altman.

Synopsis

As the film begins, wealthy housewife and children's author Cathryn (Susannah York) receives a series of disturbing and eerie phone calls in her home in London one dreary night. The female voice on the other end suggests mockingly to her that her husband Hugh (Rene Auberjonois) is having an affair. Her husband comes home, finding her in complete disarray. Hugh attempts to comfort her, but then he is gone, and she sees a different man who is behaving as if he were her husband. She screams in horror and backs away, only to see her vision of the figure revert back to her husband.

Hugh attributes her outburst to stress and her budding pregnancy, thus, he decides to take a vacation to the countryside at an isolated cottage. But as she dwells there, Cathryn delves into darker delusions as the stranger returns, and she finds it difficult to determine what is reality and what is in her mind.

Cast

Awards

1972 New York Film Critics Circle - Nominated - Best Actress (Susannah York)

1972 Cannes Film Festival

• Won - Best Actress (Susannah York)^[1]
• Nominated - Golden Palm (Robert Altman)

1973 Academy Awards - Nominated - Best Music, Original Dramatic Score (John Williams)

1973 BAFTA Awards - Nominated - Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond)

1973 Golden Globes - Nominated - Best English-Language Foreign Film

1973 Writers Guild of America - Nominated - Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen (Robert Altman)

Miscellanea

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (January 2009)

• Reportedly, the film's original negative was burned by Columbia Pictures. This rumor, long believed to be true, has turned out to be false. MGM's home video wing released a DVD in the fall of 2003, apparently from a new print struck from an existing negative.

• Susannah York is accredited for writing the children's story that she reads throughout the film's duration.

• The name of the five main characters are actually taken from the names of the actors who portray them, only having rearranged their names (for example, Susannah York plays the character Cathryn, while Cathryn Harrison plays the character Susannah).

• Film critic Roger Ebert provides some background upon the movie in his review:

Altman shot Images (1972) in Ireland during the wet autumn months of 1971, and premiered it the following May at Cannes. It won Susannah York the award for best actress (it's the role she's most proud of), but left its Cannes audiences mostly confused. It isn't the sort of film you feel affectionate about. It's complex and cold, although not nearly as hard to understand as some of the first reviews suggested.

Columbia picked up the distribution rights (Altman was a hot property in 1971) and entered Images in the New York Film Festival. Inexplicably, neither of the two principal film critics for the New York Times (Vincent Canby and Roger Greenspan) chose to review it, and it was dismissed in a blistering and largely unperceptive review by Howard Thompson ("a mishmash"). And that was that." [It is] "an intelligently constructed and spectacularly well-photographed film."^[2]

• Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide honors the film with three and a half out of four stars. He describes the film as "difficult but fascinating" and that it may be "off-putting at first, but worth the effort to hang on."

See also

• Twist ending
• Schizophrenia
• Surrealism

References

External links

• Images at the Internet Movie Database
• Chicago Sun Times Review of "Images" by Roger Ebert
• New York Times Review of "Images" by Howard Thompson