MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Nashville (1975, 160 minutes)
Robert Altman’s films are so richly seductive, a guitar-strumming singer opened a show at San Francisco’s Hotel Utah, two years ago, armed with an entire set of originals written specifically about Altman’s best work (M*A*S*H, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville).
Nashville is a complex tapestry of dozens of story lines. It’s almost like a Dostoevsky novel where you have to take notes to keep up. It’s 1975, and Music City has been invaded by a white van draped with gaudy political messages and sporting a bullhorn blaring out the recorded wisdom of presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker: “All of us are deeply involved in politics, whether we know it or not. When you pay more for an auto than it cost Columbus to make his first voyage to America, that’s politics.” Interlaced throughout the picture, the narrative acts like a Greek chorus.
Aimed at next year’s bi-centennial, country star Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) is cutting a bloated, patriotic ballad with a studio full of crack session men: (“I’ve lived through two depressions and seven dust bowl droughts/Floods, locusts and tornadoes but I don’t have any doubts/We must be doing something right to last 200 years”).
Hamilton stops during one take to criticize a long-haired piano player, then orders “that woman with the hat” out of the studio. “Mr. Hamilton,” blurts out the lady in question (Geraldine Chaplin), “I’m Opal from the BBC. I’m making a documentary on Nashville.” Oblivious to her explanation, Hamilton mutters, “I don’t want no recording equipment in here. If she wants a copy of this record, she can buy it when it’s released.” Undaunted, Opal moves on to the adjoining studio where a white girl (Lily Tomlin) is fronting a wailing back gospel chorus.
Months after rehabbing at the Baltimore Burn Center, legendary country warbler Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) is about to land at Nashville Metro Airport, jammed with thousands of rabid devotees, the press, the Franklin High School marching band, an all-girl M-1 rifle platoon spinning their weapons somewhat in unison and the red-white-and-blue-clad Tennessee Twirlers. The American flag, surrounded by those of Tennessee and the Confederate States of America, flap in the scorching breeze.
As Barbara Jean’s personal eight-seater taxis down the tarmac, a local TV newsman intones, “And here she comes at last, Barbara Jean, fully recovered from a terrible accident where she was burned by a fire baton.” Wearing a flowing white gown, Barbara Jean addresses her adoring multitude. “I think you kids get better every year,” she says to the band. “It’s great to be home, even though it’s as hot as a firecracker.” After noticing more fans confined inside the terminal, she takes four steps down a concrete walkway to greet them and collapses to the ground as though she’s been shot.
