Images [1972] dir Robert Altman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068732/

'Images'


Directed by Robert Altman
Produced by Tommy Thompson
Written by Robert Altman
Starring Susannah York
Rene Auberjonois
Marcel Bozzuffi
Cathryn Harrison
Distributed by Lions Gate Films, Hemdale Film Group Ltd., Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) November 1972
18 December 1972
November 5, 1975
Running time 101 min.
Language English
Budget $807,000 (estimated

Images is a 1972 English language psychological thriller directed by Robert Altman.

Reportedly, the film's original negative was burned by Columbia Pictures. This rumor, long believed to be true, has turned out to be false. MGM's home video wing released a DVD in the fall of 2003, apparently from a new print struck from an existing negative.
Susannah York is credited for writing the children's story that she reads throughout the film's duration.
The name of the five main characters are actually taken from the names of the actors who portray them, only having rearranged their names (for example, Susannah York plays the character Cathryn, while Cathryn Harrison plays the character Susannah).
Film critic Roger Ebert provides some background upon the movie in his review:
Altman shot Images (1972) in Ireland during the wet autumn months of 1971, and premiered it the following May at Cannes. It won Susannah York the award for best actress (it's the role she's most proud of), but left its Cannes audiences mostly confused. It isn't the sort of film you feel affectionate about. It's complex and cold, although not nearly as hard to understand as some of the first reviews suggested.

Columbia picked up the distribution rights (Altman was a hot property in 1971) and entered Images in the New York Film Festival. Inexplicably, neither of the two principal film critics for the New York Times (Vincent Canby and Roger Greenspan) chose to review it, and it was dismissed in a blistering and largely unperceptive review by Howard Thompson ("a mishmash"). And that was that." [It is] "an intelligently constructed and spectacularly well-photographed film."

Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide honors the film with three and a half out of four stars. He describes the film as "difficult but fascinating" and that it may be "off-putting at first, but worth the effort to hang on."