Altman, Robert (1925)

?Director. An American auteur whose unconventional career has undergone great critical and com?mercial fluctuations. In many of his films he has boldly transformed Hollywood genres to capture the absurdity and moral empti?ness of American society. His two Westerns, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, subvert the genre's conventions by providing a narration with loose ends, scenes with overlapping sound and action, and central figures who behave very differ?ently from the traditional Western hero. Buffalo Bill is portrayed as an insecure, vain figure, who is purely a product of promotion and grandiose rhetoric. He is an empty shell, and for Altman an apt symbol of an America whose reality is lost in a mythology which it has itself begun to believe. Altman is an idiosyncratic and ambitious director whose Westerns can alternately provide luminous epiphanies into the heart of American cul?ture, and in the next scene (this is particu?larly true of Buffalo Bill and the Indians) turn into a turgid, chaotic mess, lq McCabe & Mrs. Miller! 1971 - Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's History Lessonj 1976

Filmography

Television U.S. Marshal/58?■ Lawman!The Man from Blackhawk 59 ■ Sugarfoot/Bronco/ Maverick/6o ■ Bonanza/64