Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman (born February 20, 1925 in Kansas City , Missouri , USA , † November 20, 2006 in Los Angeles , California , USA ) was an American director , author and film producer . From 1970, his films are the cinema of the New Hollywood Act. During his 55-year career, Altman made a total of 86 films, produced 39 film adaptations and wrote 37 screenplays.
life and work
Altman was the son of Helen and Bernard Clement Altman, a wealthy insurance worker. His grandfather was the German-born building contractor Frank G. Altman, who built the Altman Building , a five-story mall in downtown Kansas City that was demolished in 1974. As an adolescent, he attended two Catholic schools, Rockhurst High School and Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington , Missouri. In 1945 he registered with the United States Army Air Forces , the predecessor institution of the US Air Force founded in 1947 , with the prospect of becoming a volunteer B-24 pilot. After the war ended, he returned to his hometown of Kansas and began working for an industrial film production company in 1947.
Altman began his career as a film director in the early 1950s with sports documentaries and nearly a hundred directorial work for television , including episodes from the television series Bonanza and Alfred Hitchcock's Alfred Hitchcock Presents . His cinematic beginnings were still in the era of the fading classic Hollywood cinema. In the science fiction Countdown: Start zum Mond from 1968, he introduced the technique of overlapping dialogues into his work, a stylistic device that has already been used by film greats such as Frank Capra , Howard Hawks and Lewis Milestone , but here his dismissal by the studio Chef Jack L. Warner . It was only when he was banned from Hollywood that Altman was determined to produce independent and unusual films. He then avoided and criticized Hollywood's studio system , which in turn ignored him.
His cinematic breakthrough came with the military satire M * A * S * H of 1970 and, five years later, the US society portrait Nashville . Both films earned Robert Altman Oscar nominations and at the same time promoted New Hollywood , which he and a few other directors established as a counter-movement to Hollywood politics, which was purely aimed at commercial success. The films that Altman appeared in the 1970s were not very successful at the box office, but they gave him a special place in film history among the directors of New Hollywood . His working method, which is based on auteur cinema, and the productions that focus on the film as such played a role in particular. This was also noticeable in the short preparation phases - at least one film per year was the rule. Another stylistic feature of his films is the combination of different storylines and person constellations, which often only reveal a connection at second glance. A black, not immediately recognizable, humor often comes into play in the films.
In the 1980s he turned his attention to the theater. It was only with the 1992 Hollywood satire The Player and the successful episode film Short Cuts (1993) that Altman was able to win back a larger audience. Both, like Gosford Park in 2001, earned him Oscar nominations. Despite a total of seven nominations as director and producer, he was denied an Academy Award in one of the regular categories. At the 78th Academy Awards on March 5, 2006 Altman was finally honored with an honorary Oscar for his creative work.
Altman was an avowed cannabis smoker and jazz lover - with Kansas City he created a cinematic monument to jazz . A medical prognosis of his imminent death in the mid-1990s and a heart transplant prompted him to radically change his eating habits. He died of leukemia at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 81 . He had known about the disease for eighteen months, but kept it quiet for fear of losing orders. Altman was married a total of three times. He left his wife, Kathryn Reed Altman, with whom he had been married since 1957, two children from this marriage, as well as four other children and twelve grandchildren.
Filmography (selection)
- 1957: The James Dean Story ( The James Dean Story , documentation)
- 1968: Countdown: Start to the moon (countdown)
- 1969: That Cold Day in the Park
- 1970: MASH (M * A * S * H)
- 1970: Only flying is better (Brewster McCloud)
- 1971: McCabe & Mrs. Miller
- 1972: Mirror Images (Images)
- 1973: Death Has No Return (The Long Goodbye)
- 1974: Thieves Like Us (Thieves Like Us)
- 1974: California Split
- 1975: Nashville
- 1976: Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
- 1977: Three Women (3 Women)
- 1978: You will still think of me (Remember My Name)
- 1978: The Wedding (A Wedding)
- 1979: Quintet (Quintet)
- 1979: A Perfect Couple
- 1980: Popeye - The Sailor with the Hard Blow (Popeye)
- 1982: The Health Congress (Health)
- 1982: Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
- 1983: Greyhounds (Streamers)
- 1984: Secret Honor
- 1985: Fool for Love
- 1985: Cool and funky, also: Black Cats (OC and Stiggs)
- 1987: Basements (TV) (also producer)
- 1987: Therapy is futile (Beyond Therapy)
- 1987: Les Boréades, episode from Aria
- 1988: Tanner for President ( Tanner '88 , TV series)
- 1990: Vincent and Theo (Vincent and Theo)
- 1992: The Player
- 1993: short cuts
- 1994: Prêt-à-Porter
- 1996: Jazz '34 (documentary)
- 1996: Kansas City
- 1998: Gingerbread Man (The Gingerbread Man)
- 1999: Cookie's Fortune riot in Holly Springs (Cookie's Fortune)
- 2000: Dr. T and the Women
- 2001: Gosford Park
- 2003: The Company - Das Ensemble (The Company)
- 2006: Robert Altman's Last Radio Show (A Prairie Home Companion) , also The Last Show
- producer
- 1976: Welcome to Los Angeles (Welcome to LA)
- 1977: The Cat Knows the Killer (The Late Show)
- 1994: Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
- 1997: Love Whispers (Afterglow)
- 2000: Trixie
Awards
Honors
- In 1995 he became a Knight of the French Legion of Honor .
- In 1999 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
Film awards
- 2006 honorary Oscar for life's work
- 2002 AFI Film Award for Director of the Year ( Gosford Park (2001))
- 1993 BAFTA Award for Best Director for The Player (1992)
- 2002 Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for Gosford Park (2001), together with Bob Balaban and David Levy
- 1976 Golden Bear for Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976) at the Berlinale 1976
- 1985 FIPRESCI Prize for Secret Honor - The President's Secret Honor (1984) at the 1985 Berlinale
- 1999 Prize of the Gilde Deutscher Filmkunsttheater for riot in Holly Springs (1999) at the 1999 Berlinale
- 2002 Honorary Golden Bear at the Berlinale 2002
- 1977 Bodil for best (non-European) film Nashville (1975)
- 1993 Bodil for the best (non-European) film The Player (1992)
- 1995 Bodil for the best (American) film Short Cuts (1993)
- 1970 Grand Prix for M * A * S * H (1970) at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival
- 1992 Best Director Award for The Player ( Cannes Film Festival 1992 )
- 1989 Emmy for outstanding directorial work ( Tanner '88 episode "The Boiler Room" (1988))
- 2002 Golden Globe for best director for Gosford Park (2001)
- 1994 Independent Spirit Award for Best Director of Short Cuts (1993)
- 1994 Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay ( Short Cuts (1993)), together with Frank Barhydt
- 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award
- 1993 Golden Lion for Short Cuts, together with Three Colors: Blue
- 1996 Golden Lion for life's work
literature
- Thomas Koebner : [Article] Robert Altman. In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Film directors. Biographies, descriptions of works, filmographies. 3rd, updated and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008 [1. Ed. 1999], ISBN 978-3-15-010662-4 , pp. 23-28.
- Giancarlo Castelli, Mauro Marchesini: Robert Altman. In: Rolf Giesen : kinoheute 4. Verlag Klaus Guhl, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-88220-107-X .
- Peter W. Jansen , Wolfram Schütte (Ed.): Robert Altman. Film 25 series. Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1981, ISBN 3-446-13273-2 .
- Thomas Klein, Thomas Koebner (ed.): Robert Altman - Farewell to the myth of America. Bender-Verlag, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-9806528-3-1 .
- David Thompson (Ed.): Altman on Altman. Faber and Faber, London 2006, ISBN 0-571-22089-4 .
- Some Are Great and Some Are Slight, but All Are From a Master . In: New York Times , November 24, 2006; Review of Altman's films.
- I am the perfect director . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 13, 2002 "The director Robert Altman speaks about his work and role as an outsider."
- Jordan / Lenz TARGET DATA (eds.): The 100 of the century film directors. Original edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg (1994), ISBN 3-499-16452-3 , pp. 8/9.
Web links
- Literature by and about Robert Altman in the catalog of the German National Library
- Robert Altman in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Essay, filmography, bibliography, links at Senses of Cinema (English)
- Biography ( Memento from March 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on film-zeit.de
- Hans J. Wulff: Desperate Love In: F.LM - Texts for the film , on the occasion of the honorary Oscars for Robert Altman.
- The master of parallel life. Obituary with picture gallery in: FAZ , 23 November 2006.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Honey, this will survive me . In: Die Zeit , No. 48/2006.
- ↑ Black faces . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 2, 1996. "Hollywood and jazz: Robert Altman tries to put music in the right light."
- ↑ 'S * M * A * S * H' hit man dies H'wood maverick Altman was 81 . In: New York Post , November 22, 2006.
- ^ Director Robert Altman dead at 81 . ( Memento of December 21, 2006 on the Internet Archive ) CNN , November 22, 2006.
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Altman, Robert |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Altman, Robert Bernard (full name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American director, auteur filmmaker and film producer |
DATE OF BIRTH | February 20, 1925 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Kansas City , Missouri , USA |
DATE OF DEATH | November 20, 2006 |
Place of death | Los Angeles , California , USA |