The 1980s were like forced, unpaid indefinite leave for the more challenging American directors to emerge out of the 1970s New Hollywood Cinema. Martin Scorsese mostly survived the war on adult-minded cinema. Terrence Malick just up and left, emerging at the tail end of the more independent ’90s in a nominally less hostile climate to his kind. One of the most productive casualties of the ’80s was Robert Altman, a director who pumped out smaller-scale projects like a worker-ant throughout the decade, even if few of them were buttressed by critical or commercial support. 1992’s The Player, a surprising and ceremonious return to commercial and critical success for Altman, was a ribald, scabrous affair but hardly a darling work of formalism to match any number of films Altman directed during the ’70s. Notable though that film may be, its most lasting and important achievement is more utilitarian: it brought Altman back from the nebulous ether, and afforded him the clout to make the far more intellectually provocative, cinematically daring Short Cuts. Continue reading →