Robert Altman was the director of such important films as MASH, Nashville, The Long Goodbye, The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford Park. Rumours of his failing health surfaced last year when he received an honorary Academy Award just last year and quipped that he suspected he had a woman's heart, thereby revealing he'd had a transplant. Altman was one of the most influential and well-respected directors of modern cinema. Innovative, rebellious and profoundly empathetic, his work was characterised by an initially revolutionary naturalism that was created by long, unbroken tracking shots, overlapping dialogue, multi-level narratives and ensemble casts. Actors adored him for his fostering (some say indulgence) of improvisation. For more information on the man, his life and great career, go here.He leaves a body of work that is idiosyncratic, unique, personal, political and often magnificent. His greatest works are milestones in American film history, including the black comedy MASH (still the most atheist film Hollywood has ever produced), the revisonist western McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the revisonist film noir The Long Goodbye, the tapestry-like Nashville, the enigmatic 3 Women, the joyous A Wedding, the marvellous satire on Hollywood that is The Player and the elegant and eloquent Short Cuts. He recently directed A Prairie Home Companion from a wheelchair, with one of his greatest and most indebted fans, Paul Thomas Anderson (director of the very Altmanesque Boogie Nights and Magnolia) as his assistant.
At Swansea, his films are studied on the modules Film and Television Genres and Signing the Screen: Film Authorship.
Robert Altman died on 20 November 2006. He was 81.
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