DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
PRODUCER: Scott Bushnell
PRODUCTION CO: Mark Goodson Productions, Viacom, Sandcastle 5
​SCREENPLAY: Ed Graczyk, based on his play
PHOTOGRAPHY: Pierre Mignot
EDITOR: Jason Rosenfield
WITH: Sandy Dennis (Mona), Cher (Sissy), Karen Black (Joanne), Sudie Bond (Juanita), Kathy Bates (Stella Mae), Martin Heflin (Edna Louise), Mark Patton (Joe Qualley)

FESTIVALS: Toronto, Chicago

REVIEWS

“Altman’s film… jump-started the serious acting career of Cher, nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as Sissy, one of the “Disciples of James Dean,” an all-women fan club devoted to the late actor, meeting for a reunion at a crumbling Woolworth’s in a small Texas town in 1975. Joined by group leader Mona (Sandy Dennis) and the glamorous, initially mysterious Joanne (Karen Black), the women recall their love for Dean, and the club that began twenty years earlier when the actor was in a nearby town filming Giant, and the fatal car accident that followed. Soon, as more memories of 1955 are recalled, secrets are revealed and old friendships are put to the test…

[This] study of nostalgia’s ability to distort the past [is] another of the director’s fascinating portraits of the friendships between women. It’s also one of Altman’s warmest and most entertaining movies.”

– Masters of Cinema

“A cinematic tour de force. The first of Robert Altman’s adaptations of stage plays introduced his admirably rigorous, enormously fertile approach to the question of turning theatre into something properly cinematic… Crucially, Altman never ‘opens out’ the action but uses the many sightlines provided both by his characteristically prowling camera and by a mirror on the wall of his single dime-store set to reveal and illuminate the cracks in the masks of his garrulous characters. And the performances of his almost entirely female cast are uniformly superb – Cher’s, especially, being a revelation.”

​– Geoff Andrew, BFI London Film Festival 2021

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Auckland  
Monday, 14 March, 6.15pm. Open to the public (AFS only), all tickets $10 (members free).
​Tickets on sale now at Academy Cinemas 

Nelson     
Tuesday, 29 March, 6.00pm

Canterbury
Monday, 11 April, 7pm

Palmerston North
Wednesday, 4 May, 6pm

New Plymouth
Wednesday, 11 May, 6pm

Dunedin
Wednesday, 25 May, 7.30pm

Tauranga
Thursday, 30 June, 6.30pm

Whanganui   
Monday, 29 August, 7.00pm

ROBERT ALTMAN  selection >> ​