1980 Week: HealtH

          A tiresome ensemble piece blending conspiracies, politics, romance, and satire through the mechanism of interconnected storylines and a kaleidescopic soundtrack, Robert Altman’s HealtH comes across as Nashville Lite. At best, HealtH is a goofy comedy using the intrigue at a health-food convention as a means of spoofing the corruption of modern American politics. At worst, HealtH is a pretentious trifle from an overrated director repeating old tricks. It’s interesting that HealtH was released in 1980, because the film’s artistic and commercial failure neatly bookends the chapter in Altman’s career that began with the success of M*A*S*H exactly one decade earlier. Over the course of the ’70s, Altman made a number of fine films and just as many bad ones, cementing his reputation as an iconoclast who put together wonderful casts by offering the promise of loose work environments and unconventional material. Yet by the time Altman derailed with the twin 1980 misfires of HealtH and Popeye, his first run as a commercial director was over. It wouldn’t be until 1992’s The Player that Altman was able to assemble a cast as impressive as the one he gathered for HealtH.

          Set at a hotel in Florida, HealtH observes a convention at which the officers of a massive health-food organization gather to elect their new president. The leading candidates are Esther Brill  (Lauren Bacall), a pontificating 83-year-old virgin with narcolepsy; Isabelle Garnell (Glenda Jackson), an insufferable progressive who recites old Adlai Stevenson speeches whether or not anyone’s listening; Gloria Burbank (Carol Burnett), a neurotic political operative with White House connections; and Dr. Gil Gainey (Paul Dooley), a vitamin salesman using his “campaign” as a publicity stunt to hype his products. Also involved in the election are Gloria’s ex-husband, Harry Wolff (James Garner); dirty-tricks specialist Bobby Hammer (Henry Gibson); crazed cowboy Colonel Cody (Donald Moffatt); and real-life talk-show host Dick Cavett, who plays himself.

          The mosaic structure of the picture showcases bizarre behavior in a casual style. One gets the sense of Altman and his collaborators indulging their shared sense of humor, so the resulting film feels like a compendium of in-jokes. The actors are all so skilled that some of the gags almost connect, but the overall vibe is quite tiresome. Altman adds virtually nothing to the statements about democratic elections that he made in Nashville, and he seems disinterested in health-food culture beyond making a few judgmental digs. Not surprisingly, HealtH never found a major audience. Altman made the film as part of a multipicture deal with Fox, delivering his third dud in a row after A Perfect Couple and Quintet (both 1979), so Fox initially balked at releasing HealtH. Altman snuck the film into a few theaters during 1980, and the studio released the picture properly in 1982, when it tanked.

HealtH: FUNKY

A Perfect Couple (1979)

          When he connected with the right material, Robert Altman created distinctive cinematic experiences, allowing viewers to discover new things and to examine familiar things in fresh ways. Conversely, Altman’s engagement with weak material generally resulted in mediocrity, as well as a few artistic disasters. Altman’s two movies from 1979 illustrate this point. The sci-fi saga Quintet is a misfire on nearly every level, whereas the offbeat romantic comedy A Perfect Couple is frustratingly erratic. The basic story is drab, and only Altman would build a romantic movie around character actor Paul Dooely, a middle-aged everyman with a hangdog face. Had Altman kept things simple, A Perfect Couple could have been a charming trifle. Alas, Altman overcompensated for the slight narrative by integrating musical interludes and recurring visual metaphors. That’s why A Perfect Couple sprawls across 110 very long minutes, with as much screen time devoted to concert performances as to dramatic scenes. The balancing act doesn’t work—each of the two major cinematic elements drains energy from the other. Furthermore, Altman’s bold choice of placing a relatively inexperienced actress in the leading female role backfired, because Marta Heflin is a vacant presence who fails to match Dooley’s wonderful comic energy. Even Altman’s usual trope of employing quirky supporting characters for laughs falls flat here, because he introduces a set of eccentric relatives for Dooley’s character, and then barely uses them. 

          The main storyline begins with an uptight businessman named Alex (Dooley) sharing a calamitous first date with free-spirited Sheila (Heflin). In addition to being many years younger than Alex, Sheila is a featured vocalist in a rock band, so the would-be lovers encounter considerable differences as they try to build a relationship. In Alex’s scenes, Altman accentuates Alex’s preoccupation with his Greek heritage as well as his fraught interactions with judgmental relatives. In Sheila’s scenes, Altman focuses on rock-band dynamics. (Sheila’s group is led by a egotistical womanizer named Teddy, who is played by leather-lunged actor/singer Ted Neeley, of Jesus Christ Superstar fame.) The movie’s central relationship isn’t particularly believable, and both leading characters have unattractive qualities, so it’s hard to care very much about what happens. Altman’s meandering storytelling adds to the general feeling of indifference. Still, some of the tunes are rousing, Dooley scores a few great moments, and every so often Altman locks into a lyrical groove for a few minutes.

A Perfect Couple: FUNKY

Breaking Away (1979)

          An Oscar winner for Best Screenplay and a nominee for Best Picture, Breaking Away is one of the true gems of the late ’70s. While the film is inarguably a feel-good sports tale with a big race for a climax—which is to say that the story traffics in formulaic elements—Breaking Away explodes with so much in the way of memorable acting, characterization, and dialogue that the handicap of a preordained ending isn’t crippling. From start to finish, screenwriter Steve Tesich and director Peter Yates ground the story in specificity, separating Breaking Away from the pack of routine inspirational athletic pictures. Tesich, a Yugoslavian native whose family relocated to Indiana when he was a teenager, brings a unique outsider/insider viewpoint to this perspective on American culture; he captures the colorful textures of American idiom while evincing a sharp consciousness of class divisions. Further, the credible qualities of Tesich’s script enable the film’s four principal actors to sculpt distinct (and distinctly likable) personalities.

          Breaking Away’s protagonist is Dave (Dennis Christopher), a recent graduate from an Indiana high school who’s obsessed with a celebrated group of Italian bicyclists. Accordingly, even though Dave’s a corn-fed townie who spends his afternoons at a swimming hole with fellow high-school grads Cyril (Daniel Stern), Mike (Dennis Quaid), and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley)—none of whom have clear plans for the future—Dave emulates Italian culture by singing along to opera and speaking Italian at every opportunity. This causes great consternation for Dave’s working-class dad, Ray (Paul Dooley); Ray’s befuddled rants about his kid’s abandonment of U.S. culture are endlessly entertaining. As the story progresses, Dave gets romantically involved—under false pretenses—with a pretty Indiana University coed, Katherine (Robyn Douglass), and he also decides to enter an annual bike race called the “Little 500.” Dave’s nervy encroachment into the rarified collegiate world exacerbates tensions between upper-crust students and blue-collar locals. (The college kids pejoratively refer to locals as “cutters” because limestone mining is a venerable local industry.)

          You can pretty much guess where things go from here, and, indeed, the story features lots of oppressor-vs.-underdog standoffs. Yet the joy of Breaking Away is the journey, not the destination. For instance, the ensemble scenes involving Dave’s friends feature crisp dialogue, naturalistic acting, and a warm sense of camaraderie. On a deeper level, the sense of anxiety these young men express speaks volumes about the fraught lives of people restricted by limited choices. Christopher, Haley, Quaid, and Stern function as a cohesive unit, even though Christopher has more scenes than anyone else, and their enchanting work is complemented by great supporting turns from Dooley and Barbara Barrie (who plays Ray’s wife). The actors playing IU snobs don’t fare quite as well, since their roles lack equal measures of complexity, but everyone is effective in his or her way. Director Yates, who often made thrillers such as Bullitt (1968) and The Deep (1977), captures Tesich’s humanistic storyline in an unvarnished style that suits the material, and his filmmaking soars during the climactic bike race.

Breaking Away: OUTTA SIGHT

A Wedding (1978)

          By the late ’70s, director Robert Altman had found his stylistic sweet spot, blending downbeat irony and edgy social satire in seriocomic ensemble stories laced with semi-improvised acting. Actors clearly had a field day on Altman’s projects, because the director famously shot with long lenses and multiple microphones in order to capture everything—and then, during editing, the moment-to-moment focus went to whoever was doing the most interesting thing on camera at any given time. As a result, even middling Altman pictures like A Wedding have variety and vitality, with imaginative actors using Altman’s ambling storyline as a springboard for creating interesting behavior.

          The basic plot of A Wedding involves the union of Dino (Desi Arnaz Jr.), the son of an Italian businessman and his American heiress wife, to Muffin (Amy Stryker), the daughter of a self-made American entrepreneur and his dissatisfied wife. Taking place almost entirely at the posh reception held in the Italian’s mansion, the picture is a busy farce weaving together subplots about adultery, alcoholism, death, family secrets, illicit pregnancy, and youthful rebellion. Like most Altman pictures, subplots overlap with each other as the film bounces between short isolated scenes and long interwoven sequences. And like most Altman pictures, some of it works and some of it doesn’t.

          The standout performance is delivered by Altman regular Paul Dooley as the exasperated father of the bride, a corn-fed windbag so infatuated with his favorite daughter, Buffy (Mia Farrow), that he doesn’t realize she’s promiscuous and tweaked. Dooley’s ability to toss off tart dialogue while harrumphing through an uptight tantrum is a joy to watch. Howard Duff is fun as the perpetually inebriated family doctor who gropes every woman he “treats,” blithely shooting people full of feel-good injections. Carol Burnett, while perhaps working a bit too broadly for Altman’s sly style, provides her impeccable comic timing as Dooley’s lonely wife; her scenes of romantic intrigue with a balding oaf of a suitor (Pat McCormick) are silly but enjoyable. Screen legend Lillian Gish shows up for a sharp cameo at the beginning of the picture, adding charm and gravitas.

          Italian leading man Vittorio Gassman is less effective as the father of the groom, partially because his storyline is monotonously gloomy and intense; Altman frequently tried too hard to blend high comedy and high drama, and Gassman’s storyline in A Wedding is a good example of Altman veering too far into bummer psychodrama. Worse, some actors get completely lost—promising characters played by Dennis Christopher, Pam Dawber, Lauren Hutton, Nina Van Pallandt, and Tim Thomerson are introduced well only to fade into the chaos.

          Ultimately, however, the real problem with A Wedding is that it doesn’t go anywhere. Altman forces an ending through the introduction of a deus ex machina tragedy, but the story really just vamps in a pleasant manner for two hours until the narrative stops at a somewhat arbitrary point. Thus, while it contains many interesting things, A Wedding is like so many other second-string Altman pictures: a mostly well-executed trifle.

A Wedding: FUNKY