3 Women - Criterion Collection

Starring:Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert Fortier, Ruth Nelson, John Cromwell, Sierra Pecheur, Craig Richard Nelson, Maysie Hoy, Belita Moreno, Leslie Ann Hudson, Patricia Ann Hudson, Beverly Ross, John Davey, Dennis Christopher
Director: Robert Altman
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
"The cinema," Orson Welles famously noted, "is a ribbon of dream." 3 Women is one of few feature films on record as having taken form in a dream. The dreamer was Robert Altman, and although all his best work has an oneiric quality--the floaty zooms, the eerie pastels bleeding into one another, the slip and slide of characters' trajectories overlapping in the fluid accumulation of what passes for narrative--this last masterpiece in his amazing seven-year run of 1970s masterpieces is only more so. Shelly Duvall, that most unorthodox of Altman creatures, locks in the tone with her eerie portrayal of Millie Lammoreaux, a Texan hoyden whose nonstop prattle turns life into a stream-of-consciousness reverie even as most of the people in her vicinity studiously ignore her. Her primacy is worshiped, then emulated by a strange, certifiably dysfunctional childwoman named Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) who comes to work in the same old-age home as Millie, moves in with her, and progressively usurps her lifestyle and finally her identity. The third woman, Willie (the late Janice Rule), is a pregnant artist who paints reptilian humanoid figures on the floors of swimming pools. Willie's husband (Robert Fortier), a strutting gun nut who once had a bit part on TV's Wyatt Earp ("He knows Hugh O'Brian"), is just about the only male character of consequence in the film. This macho man gets his--but what "his" may be is only one of the movie's beguiling mysteries. It's only appropriate that the cameraman, Chuck Rosher, should be the son of the man who photographed F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. --Richard T. Jameson
Description
In a dusty, under-populated California resort town, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a naive and impressionable Southern waif begins her life as a nursing home attendant. There, Pinky finds her role model in fellow nurse "Thoroughly Modern" Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), a misguided would-be sophisticate and hopeless devotee of Cosmopolitan and Woman's Day magazines. When Millie accepts Pinky into her home at the Purple Sage singles' complex, Pinky's hero-worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than either could have anticipated. Featuring brilliant performances from Spacek and Duvall, Robert Altman's dreamlike masterpiece, 3 Women, careens from the humorous to the chilling to the surreal, resulting in one of the most unusual and compelling films of the 1970s.

3 Women - Criterion Collection
Average customer rating:

3 Women

Strange, dreamlike, and disturbing

1 + 1 +1 = ?

Altman Does Hitchcock

Fascinating character studies

3 Women - Criterion Collection
Starring: Shelley Duvall , Sissy Spacek , Janice Rule , Robert Fortier , and Ruth Nelson
Director: Robert Altman
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video
Women's Friendship | By Theme | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video
Psychological Drama | By Theme | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video
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Christopher, Dennis | ( C ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Duvall, Shelley | ( D ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Fortier, Robert | ( F ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Moreno, Belita | ( M ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Nelson, Craig Richard | ( N ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Pecheur, Sierra | ( P ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Rule, Janice | ( R ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Spacek, Sissy | ( S ) | Actors & Actresses | Stores | DVD | Video
Altman, Robert | ( A ) | Directors | Stores | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B0001GH5TW
Release Date: 2004-04-20

Amazon.com essential video

"The cinema," Orson Welles famously noted, "is a ribbon of dream." 3 Women is one of few feature films on record as having taken form in a dream. The dreamer was Robert Altman, and although all his best work has an oneiric quality--the floaty zooms, the eerie pastels bleeding into one another, the slip and slide of characters' trajectories overlapping in the fluid accumulation of what passes for narrative--this last masterpiece in his amazing seven-year run of 1970s masterpieces is only more so. Shelly Duvall, that most unorthodox of Altman creatures, locks in the tone with her eerie portrayal of Millie Lammoreaux, a Texan hoyden whose nonstop prattle turns life into a stream-of-consciousness reverie even as most of the people in her vicinity studiously ignore her. Her primacy is worshiped, then emulated by a strange, certifiably dysfunctional childwoman named Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) who comes to work in the same old-age home as Millie, moves in with her, and progressively usurps her lifestyle and finally her identity. The third woman, Willie (the late Janice Rule), is a pregnant artist who paints reptilian humanoid figures on the floors of swimming pools. Willie's husband (Robert Fortier), a strutting gun nut who once had a bit part on TV's Wyatt Earp ("He knows Hugh O'Brian"), is just about the only male character of consequence in the film. This macho man gets his--but what "his" may be is only one of the movie's beguiling mysteries. It's only appropriate that the cameraman, Chuck Rosher, should be the son of the man who photographed F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. --Richard T. Jameson

Description

In a dusty, under-populated California resort town, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a naive and impressionable Southern waif begins her life as a nursing home attendant. There, Pinky finds her role model in fellow nurse "Thoroughly Modern" Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), a misguided would-be sophisticate and hopeless devotee of Cosmopolitan and Woman's Day magazines. When Millie accepts Pinky into her home at the Purple Sage singles' complex, Pinky's hero-worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than either could have anticipated. Featuring brilliant performances from Spacek and Duvall, Robert Altman's dreamlike masterpiece, 3 Women, careens from the humorous to the chilling to the surreal, resulting in one of the most unusual and compelling films of the 1970s.

Customer Reviews:

3 Women.......2007-07-03

This moody, dreamlike drama of psychological obsession was one of Altman's finest films of the 1970s, owing mostly to the oddities of his two female leads, Spacek and Duvall, whose performances are surreal and strangely touching. Altman, who based his script on an actual dream, focuses heavily on atmosphere and symbolic visual imagery, but he allows his actors--especially Duvall, as the pathologically chattering Millie--plenty of room to unravel their weird Southern personas. Vague, provocative, and awash in lensman Charles Rosher's hazy blue-and-yellow palette, "3 Women" is a bewitching tale of naiveté and emotional distress.

Strange, dreamlike, and disturbing.......2007-05-25

Very weird psychological drama from Robert Altman, featuring Sissy Spacek as a mousy woman who befriends the talkative but equally unpopular Shelley Duvall when they both work in a rehab center. As the roommates increasingly crash and have conflicts, they enter into an odd connection with a third woman, who makes disturbing art when her philandering husband is off....well, philandering. Atmospheric and bizarre but tame enough to get a PG rating.

1 + 1 +1 = ?.......2006-12-22

I've wanted to see Robert Altman's "3 Women"(1977) for long time and finally saw it last night. The references to one of my all time favorites, Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" are obvious: two young women, the main characters (seemingly meek, childlike Pinky and outgoing and seemingly popular but in reality a sad loser Millie seem almost to exchange identities, or to become one in a desperate search for connection and sense of belonging but "3 Women" is memorable and haunting on its own terms. It makes you think long time after it's over. As a matter of fact, I am still thinking about it. I think that it is an incredible work of an extraordinary master. As always in his best films, Robert Altman is terrific - innovative, iconoclastic, free-spirited, unconventional, and truly original. He is a great humanist who sees through his characters but never makes fun of them and he understands them. Under his directing, Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacec gave two astonishing performances. They were both great but Duvall was a revelation. She adapted the loquacious Millie's personality and become the character. Altman had discovered Duvall at one of the malls in Texas where she was selling cosmetics and given her roles in his six films. I want also to mention the eerie music, the dreamy and uneasy atmosphere of something sinister ready to happen, the scary and mesmerizing murals on the bottom of the pool that the third woman, silent and mysterious, tired and wise Willie (Janice Rule) was painting. Altman did not try to trick or confuse me, and the story seems to be simple one but I am not sure that I understood everything, especially the enigmatic ending. Altman was aware of the effect of his movie to the viewers and in his commentary he says that he sees the film as a painting and that the audience should feel it but not understand it. In this regard it also reminds of "Un chien andalou" (1929) which was supposed to be experienced directly and not analyzed by the viewers.

"3 Women" is another great film by one of the best American film directors. I've never seen a bad film from Robert Altman.

4.5/5

Altman Does Hitchcock.......2006-12-22

Since Robert Altman's recent passing, I've made it my mission to see all of his films. I've seen about 13 so far ... and this one was the most unexpected surprise yet. A great film! But not action-packed by any means.

This is a thriller in the mold of 40s-era Hitchcock or Polanski's "Repulsion" -- with touches of Bergman, the Twilight Zone and David Lynch throughout. [Lynch must have watched this film when developing "Twin Peaks."] Despite these influence [homages?], it has Robert Altman's fingerprints all over it.

Be patient with this movie. Look in the corners of the frame. Try to absorb the tidbits of conversations. You'll be rewarded with little details in the early stages that have unexpected payoffs later in the film. Having said that, it's a movie you can pay strict attention to and spot clues throughout ... or just let it wash over you like a fever dream.

I could not stop thinking about this movie for days. I want to let some time pass before watching it again, though I definitely will see it multiple times in the future.

A few thoughts:
It seems like nearly every scene has characters looking through or being filmed through glass or water [sometimes both]. Reflections off water, mirrors or windows occur frequently, and often reveal hidden details that move the "plot" forward.

And the music! It sets a creepy tone that builds and builds to the perplexing climax. It's unsettling and it's nearly impossible to guess where the plot is leading -- or even who you're supposed to sympathize with. You could even debate who the "3 Women" really are.

Altman's personal take is that the last scene in the movie actually takes place right before the first scene in the movie. I've tried to get a handle on that theory, and must respectfully disagree with the creator!

But he is the first to say no interpretation is wrong or right. Like a recurring dream, the film is meant to endlessly circle back on itself. Give this one a chance. It will haunt you if you let it.

Fascinating character studies.......2006-11-22

Robert Altman's THREE WOMEN is a fascinating character study of a number of oddballs living in a slow-paced southwestern town. Millie (Shelly Duval) is a chatty, delusional nursing home attendant whose perception of her own social skills and sexual attractiveness is considerably inflated; Pinky (Sissy Spacek) is a shy, introverted newcomer who finds employment at the same facility at which Millie works, and who becomes obsessed with her new coworker; Willie (Janice Rule) is a pregnant, somewhat bohemian character who speaks very little, and who paints odd reptilian murals at the bottom of the swimming pool at the apartment complex she and her husband manage (where Millie lives and which Pinky later also moves into); Edgar is Willie's filandering, macho, somewhat sinister appearing husband, whose claim to fame is that had appeared on the old "Wyatt Earp" TV series.

Though the film moves very slowly, and offers little in the way of plot "action", it remains intensely compelling due to Altman's nuanced characters and intentionally vague, dream-like quality. Spacek and Duval's performances are magnificent, and special mention should also be made of Rule, who had very little dialogue, yet who managed to create a memorable, fascinating character through her mostly non-verbal acting.

Definitely not a film for fans of car chases or those who like every little thing explicitly spelled out, but for those who like to draw their own conclusions, thos remains a very rewarding film to watch.

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