The SDMB Musical Lover's Salon and Debating Society Presents: Nashville (1975)

Cafe Society
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Nashville

Directed by Robert Altman
Starring: Ronee Blakely, Karen Black, Henry Gibson, Shelley Duvall, Ned Beatty, Keith Carradine, Barbara Harris, Jeff Goldblum, Scott Glen, Geraldine Chaplin, etc.

Gah. I’m not much of a thread starter. But here goes…

I love this big shambling slice of the 70s – from Haven Hamilton, the little ferret of a preening self-important sloganeer (“We must be doing something right to last 200 years”), to Barbara Jean the hothouse flower, tragic, talented and nuts. You never really get to know any of them, but you probably recognize them all if you remember the 70s. They tie the movie together by simply showing up and crisscrossing each others’ story line. L.A. Joan never quite gets around to see her dying aunt. Hal Phillip Walker, the populist candidate for president, who you never see but hear droning on constantly. Jeff Goldblum, the guy on the bike. They all weave in and out of the action (its hard to call it a plot) bumping into the rest of the oddballs characters on their way through the music industry.

Here’s some stuff I didn’t appreciate the first time, but noticed 20 years later:

[ul][li]Ronee Blakely, who also wrote all her songs in the movie was very, very good.[/li][li]Karen Black looked right but probably should have had someone else sing for her.[/li][li]Somehow when I saw this move when it came out, I thought the song I’m Easy was for Lily Tomlin’s character and Keith Carradine’s character was a misunderstood romantic. Okay, so it took thirty years, but I did figure out that his character was really a self satisfied, egocentric, womanizing sleazeball and the song, despite the Grammy, is insipid . [/li][li]My Idaho Home and Another Time are both good songs, but the last song, It Don’t Worry Me, is the stand out. I loved the optimistic irony of ending the film with Barbara Harris finally getting her big break on the heels of someone else’s tragedy.[/ul] [/li]I thought this movie would be dated. I hadn’t seen it since I saw it in the theater back in 1975. It isn’t at all. It’s more like a perfectly rendered little peek back at history – a big quirky mosaic and a great film!

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Could be that I’m not old enough to appreciate it. But I tried watching this for the first time last year.

I kept falling asleep (and I don’t often do so). After four or five sessions I was maybe 2/3rds of the way through. Then I gave up; never saw the end.

Nothing I could put my finger on, other than the aimlessness of it. That generally isn’t a problem per se, but somethings was zonking me out almost immediately after turning it on.

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I have to admit I’m not old enough to appreciate it. (Or at least, I’m not old enough to remember the 70’s.)
I did enjoy the song about 200 years meaning we must be doing something right.
I have a question for anyone who is old enough to remember the 70’s. Watching so soon after the election, I found myself comparing Hal Philip Walker to Ross Perot and Ralph Nader to at least a minimal extent. But, I thought of them because of electoral campaigns that are more recent than the 70’s. Who would people have associated Walker with in the 70s?

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My opinion: Nashville and the first two Godfather movies are the greatest American films of the 1970s. I saw it twice theatrically when it was first released in 1975, and was just amazed at how many piquant character vignettes, and so many good character actors, one movie could have.

As to Hal Phillip Walker, he’s a generic populist who emphasizes his Washington outsider status. The nearest real-life example would have been Alabama Governor George Wallace, a presidential candidate in 1968 and 1972, minus Wallace’s segregationist history.

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BTW, the never-seen Hal Phillip Walker’s campaign speech was written and spoken by Thomas Hal Phillips.

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Don’t forget McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

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Actually, Walker reminded me more of Jimmy Carter.

Nashville is a truly great film. It is, however, a film that makes you work. You have to pay attention (and it’s probably better on a big screen than a small one). Note, too, that the dialogue in the film was almost entire improvised by the actors.

Most everyone in the film wrote their own songs, BTW. Henry Gibson used lyrics from poems he had written when starring on Laugh-In.

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Oscar and Golden Globe, but not a Grammy.

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I liked it – but, like koeeoaddi and Walloon, I’m of an age to have seen it the first time around, though not since (till Saturday night). It holds up much better than I expected it to. A good film – I’m not sure I want to call it a great film – but is it a musical? Yes, there are lots of songs in it, many of the characters are musicians, the music weaves throughout – but I don’t think I want to call it a musical, and I’m trying to figure out why.

A bunch of reasons have occurred to me, but I’m not sure how well any of them hold up and they certainly don’t form any kind of coherent argument. That said, here they are:

[ul][li]Many (though certainly not all) of the songs are parodistic. It’s most obvious in the opening number, Henry Gibson’s bicentennial tribute (god, do y’all remember bicentennial hoopla?). [/li][li]The fact that the songs are country music rather than the usual “show tunes.” Off the top of my head, I can’t think of another musical that uses genre music of any kind – jazz… soul … well, you could argue reggae for The Harder They Come but I’m not sure I want to call that a musical either. The songs in Oklahoma!, though sung by cowboys, aren’t country songs.[/li][li]The thoroughness of the intertwining of the music and the story. We’ve talked a little about the onstage conventions of the '30s musicals, esp. Busby Berkeley’s – but even there, the story kind of stops for however long it takes to do the number.[/ul][/li]
I dunno, I’m really wrestling with this. Anyone have anything to say that might help me focus my thinking a little?

BTW, I like Ebert’s reconsideration of the film in 2000: link. Here is what, I think, was his original review, perhaps with a new introductory paragraph?

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Does Christmas smell of oranges to you?

I hate country music but I like this film *****

I love the fantastic amount of incidental detail, the way all the characters’ stories interweave constantly and all the little riffs they have going (plastic fly-swatters, sign language, frog turning up all over, that sort of stuff). I’m sure you couldn’t take it all in at one viewing - it’s like watching an ants nest. Some scenes that seem like nothing much is going on (I’m thinking of the traffic jam here) fall into place once you know where people/events will wind up.

twickster I don’t think it’s a musical, the songs are not related to the plot (if you can call it that) and certainly don’t advance the story. And since I don’t like musicals or country music a country music musical would be my idea of torture.
***** this actually goes without saying since Barbara Harris is in it and gets a big scene :slight_smile:

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I think that it isn’t really a musical because it just doesn’t feel like a musical. I think a lot of that is the tendency of the songs and their singers to slip into the background even when they are being sung onscreen.

For example, the scene in the recording studio, I remember that song best because it was quirky and appealled to me, but otherwise the interaction of the characters with each other seemed more important than the song.

In a normalmusical, everything stops while a song is sung/played/danced to unless the song advances the plot. Occasionally snippets of song may be sung, but usually musicals have big musical numbers, even if the singer sits in her window and sings.

And so in Nashville you have a movie which seems like it should be a musical, because it has “enough” music to be so, and the characters perform it, but the music seems to be background music performed onscreen and so it doesn’t feel like a musical.