Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 21:28:18 +0000
From: Jay_Craig-AT-BAYLOR.EDU
Subject: Re: Short Cuts


>Me, I don't think this film has very much to do with showing anything
>about causality.  I see the film's "causalities" very much as montage
>devices, like the linking together of dance figures.

Granted, distant causality seems to serve only as some "excuse" to bring 
characters together.  Without something to tie them together (cohabitation in a 
dispersive universe, clumsy metaphor, or something), the film would be merely a 
series of isolated short-stories.  Altman certainly doesn't criticize 
traditional causality or propose some new model.  (If he does, I'd like to hear 
how.)

>For example, it seems to me that the fact 
>that the characters represent a wide range of social/economic milieus 
>should be counted as an important montage device.  

I think I disagree.  Socio-economic status doesn't serve as a connective form of 
montage (water seeking its own level) in the film.  Nor does it play a 
disjuctive role (something organic, like in Griffith).  I don't think it is even 
dialectic (juxtaposition of class resulting in some "third").  Rather, as is 
typical in ALtman films, chance and accident causally link events, emotions, and 
people.  The represtentation is not one of realism.  Nearly every one of the 
twenty or so "principals" appears in frame, at one time or another, with most of 
the others.  I'm not much of a statistician, but my guess is that doesn't happen 
very often, with such "diverse" people in LA.   For this to happen, and for 
socioeconomic status to be a principle montage device, it would have to work 
organically (showing the whole to which the opposites belong), dialectically 
(cosacks & peasants on the Odessa steps), or merely uniformly (as Fellini 
arguably does in "La Dolce Vita").  Though there is some mix of character types 
(they do mostly remain middle-aged, white, and employed--remember, Carver is not 
writing about LA, not that Altman is strictly following Carver), I still think 
they are connected provisionally, causally, and usually in fleeting or chance 
ways.  Not only is this Altman qua Altman, it seems to find support in the 
manner in which the film was thrown together (i.e., stories were filmed first, 
connections were inserted later).  Over forty hours of film were shot, with the 
editor on the set, dailies worked into rough cuts which ALtman almost always 
approved without question.  Contrary to my initial supposition, the film was not 
carefully planned at all.  The editor was on the set, the script was bandied 
about just to give the actors a "feel" for the stuff, and almost all scenes were 
improvised extensively.  The editor, Peroni (a former NY cab driver, who also 
editted parts of "Vinnie & Theo," and all of "The Player," and "Pret-a-porter), 
was responsible for most of the links between the stories (including, with some 
input from Altman, the cute little "connections" from scene to scene).  Altman 
even entertained the idea of letting her (i.e., Peroni) cut two distinct films 
from the footage shot--films which would both be "versions" of the same 
underlying set of "facts."  (One was to be titled "To Hell With Love," and the 
other "Prisoner of Life"--certainly the dominating sentiments in Altman's film.  
He will have an opportunity to make two linked films with Kushner's "Angels in 
America," which will be released, acclaimed, and controversial, I imagine, 
sometime in the next year.)

>To me, the "whole" of the film is a moral whole.  I perceive the film
>as an episodic morality play similar to "La Dolce Vita".  But a very
>sardonic one: for instance, the final earthquake, a device traditionally 
>employed to punish the iniquitous, here has the single effect of
>covering up the murder.  
>
>So what is interesting to me is what kinds of things create this perception 
>of a single moral universe. 

You may be right.  In fact, you are probably absolutely right.  I am looking, 
still, at frames, shots, sequences, cuts, etc. in very practical terms, though 
allowing some conceptual flexibility for how the operations may function.  As 
such, I am seeing what ties things together cut to cut, scene to scene, etc.  
That seems to be, without question, chance--either due to Altman's predeliction 
for such, or to expedience created by his demands on his editor.  However, there 
is without doubt a "moral universe" betrayed throughout the film.  I think, 
however, that this results more from Altman's set, than from anything that is 
done "to" the celluloid.  I find this unifying "morality" unsatisfying and 
unfair (creating caricatures, instead of characters), but there it is.  And 
there it has always been, with Altman.

For those who don't have the book handy, I'll transcribe:

"...The image no longer refers to a situation which is globalizing or synthetic, 
but rather to one which is dispersive.  The characters are multiple, with weak 
interferences and become principal or revert to being secondary.  It is 
nevertheless not a series of sketches, a succession of short stories, since they 
are all caught in the same reality which disperses them.  Robert Altman explores 
this direction in "A Wedding" and particularly in "Nashville," with the multiple 
soundtracks and anamorphic screen which allows several simultaneous stagings....
"In the second place, the line or the fibre of the universe which prolongs 
events into one another, or brought about the connection of portions of space, 
is broken.  The small form ASA is therefore no less compromised than the large 
form SAS.  Ellipsis ceases to be a mode of the tale, a way in which one goes 
from an action to a partially disclosed situation: it belongs to the situation 
itself, and reality is lacunary as much as dispersive.  Linkages, connections, 
or liaisons are deliberately weak.  Chance becomes the sole guiding thread, as 
in Altman's "Quintet."  Sometimes the event delays and is lost in idle periods, 
sometimes it is there too quickly, but it does not belong to the one to whom it 
happens (even death...).  [Deleuze then talks about the domination of cliche in 
Altman]
"Now it is here that the American cinema finds its *limits.*  All the aesthetic 
or even political qualities that it can have remain narrowly critical and in 
this way even less 'dangerous' than if they were being made use of in a project 
of positive creation.  Then, either the critique swerves abruptly and attacks 
only a misuse of apparatuses and institutions, in striving to save the remains 
of the American Dream, as in Lumet; or it extends itself, but becomes empty and 
starts to grate, as in Altman, content to parody the cliche instead of giving 
birth to a new image.  As Lawrence said about painting: the rage against cliches 
does not lead to much if it is only content to parody them; maltreated, 
mutilated, and destroyed, a cliche is not slow to be reborn from its ashes." 
(C1, 207-11; I don't recall Deleuze discussing Altman at all in C2).

The next question is obvious: does "Short Cuts" get beyond this?  Or is it 
merely another Altman film at the limit of American cinema?  Or is it (as I 
believe) retrograde from that limit--the cliche of parodying cliches that 
Deleuze warns about?  Remember where Altman always goes: "The Player"--a 
scathing indictment of commercialism and materialism in American culture and in 
the film industry.  "Short Cuts"--?  "Pret-a-porter"--a scathing indictment of 
commercialism and materialism in the new Europe and in the fashion industry.  
Has Altman become his own scathing indictment--a parody of himself, like 
Geraldo?  Obviously many are going to say no.  We can't badmouth Papa Altman.  
Is he taking on a "positive" project?  Is he building?  Or is he still burning, 
tearing down, and perhaps running out of objects and techniques of destruction?  
What positive project is embodied in "Short Cuts," a film in which moments of 
kindness may be counted on one hand (maybe on one finger--the baker's 
contrition)?  What negative project does Altman take on in "Short Cuts" that 
hasn't been amply taken on before (often in his own films)?  Does Altman ever 
move past the crisis, or is he still altogether mired in it?

JSC



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