Robert Altman’s Images (1972) is what happens when a director with too much talent and too much ego decides he wants to make an art film about a woman losing her mind but forgets that the audience has to give a damn. It’s got all the tricks—fractured reality, eerie landscapes, jump-cut hallucinations—but it drags its feet, hoping the atmosphere will do all the heavy lifting.
Susannah York plays Cathryn, a children’s book author unraveling in a remote countryside home. There are ghosts in her head or maybe in the house, maybe both. Either way, they all seem to be men, because of course they are. The film bends reality so hard it forgets to have a pulse.
York does a fine job, I guess. She walks around looking fragile and disturbed, but she’s not quite young enough, not quite alluring enough to really sell the kind of doomed, fever-dream fantasy that might make this whole thing work. A decade younger, and maybe the madness would feel like tragedy instead of just another bad day in the life of a tired woman who writes bedtime stories.
Then there’s René Auberjonois, who shows up with that smarmy face of his, the kind of guy you’d pay good money just to slap across the mouth. He plays her husband (in what sci-fi world is this dude straight?), but there’s something so naturally creepy about him, like he should be selling used cars instead of whispering sweet nothings to a woman on the edge of insanity. You don’t believe for a second that he’s worried about her—he seems more concerned about keeping his clothes neat.
Visually, the movie is solid. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is the real star, wrapping everything in soft-focus dread. John Williams’ score is a jagged little beast that screeches in just the right places, reminding you that this isn’t some Hollywood fairy tale—it’s an art-house experiment where you’re supposed to feel uncomfortable. And you do.
But for all its talent, Images is the kind of movie that pats itself on the back for being clever while keeping you at arm’s length. It’s a puzzle without a satisfying answer, a film that wants you to sink into its madness but never really pulls you under.
If you like your horror slow, your characters doomed, and your sense of reality thoroughly stomped on, go for it. Otherwise, you’re better off drinking a bottle of whiskey and staring at the wallpaper—at least that way, the hallucinations will be your own.