Images

Plot synopsis:
Wealthy housewife and children's author Cathryn (Susannah York) receives a series of disturbing and eerie phone calls in her home in London one dreary night. The female voice on the other end, sometimes cutting in on other phone conversations, suggests mockingly to her that her husband Hugh (René Auberjonois) is having an affair. Cathryn's husband comes home, finding her in complete disarray. Hugh attempts to comfort her, but then he is gone, and she sees a different man who is behaving as if he were her husband. She screams in horror and backs away, only to see her vision of the figure revert to her husband.
Hugh attributes her outburst to stress and her budding pregnancy. He decides to take a vacation to the countryside at an isolated cottage in Ireland, where Cathryn can work on her book and take photographs for its illustrations. Immediately upon her arrival, however, Cathryn begins to hear voices invoking her name, and witnessing strange apparitions: While preparing lunch in the kitchen one day, she witness her husband Hugh pass through the room, his body shifting into that of her dead lover, Rene. Rene continues to appear to her around the house, even having conversations with her.
Cathryn's paranoia and visions become increasingly pervasive, and are exacerbated when a local neighbor and ex-lover, Marcel, brings his adolescent daughter, Susannah, to visit. Cathryn becomes unable to distinguish Hugh from Rene or Marcel, as the men shift before her eyes. One day, Rene taunts Cathryn, asking her to kill him if she wants rid of him, and hands her a shotgun. She shoots him through the abdomen; Susannah, startled by the gunshot, runs into the house, and finds Cathryn standing in the den, having shot Hugh's camera to pieces. Cathryn claims the gun accidentally unloaded when she was moving it.
Seeking solace, Cathryn goes to a nearby waterfall, where on several occasions she sees a doppelgänger of herself staring back at her. After one of these occurrences, she returns to the house, where Hugh tells her he has to leave for business. She drives him to the train station and returns to the house, where she finds Marcel waiting inside. He begins to undress to have sex with her, but she stabs him through the chest with a kitchen knife. The next morning, she encounters a local elderly man walking his dog, and offers him to come inside for coffee, in spite of the fact that Marcel's corpse lay in the living room; he however, declines the invitation. Later in the evening, Susannah stops by the house, and remarks that her father came home drunk the night before; Cathryn is confused by this, believing she had murdered him the night before, but finds his body has disappeared from the living room. Susannah comes inside to have tea, and asks Cathryn if she looked like her when she was young before ominously saying, "I'm going to be exactly like you."
After having tea, Cathryn drives Susannah back home. Marcel comes out of the house and attempts to talk to Cathryn, but she drives away. While on a stretch of road through a desolate field, Cathryn witnesses her doppelgänger again, attempting to wave her down. Back at the house, she finds both Rene and Marcel's corpses have reappeared in the living room. Cathryn leaves again, and encounters her doppelgänger at a bend in the road; this time she stops. The doppelgänger begs Cathryn to let her in the car, and the two begin to speak in unison. She then hits the doppelgänger with the car, throwing her off a cliff and into a waterfall below. Cathryn then drives back to her home in London. At her home, she goes to take a shower. While in the bathroom, the door opens, and the doppelgänger walks inside. Cathryn screams in terror, "I killed you," to which the doppelgänger responds, "Not me." The final shot shows Hugh's corpse lying at the bottom of the falls.

Tags: bleak, psychedelic, suspenseful, atmospheric, claustrophobic

Review:
(Were the movie not lost in obscurity, you might think her an antecedent for Jack Torrance and Barton Fink.) As she copes with the would-be-regular-guy puttering of her schmucky husband (Rene Auberjonois, in a role rightly intended for Michael Murphy), two other loathsome men flit into her life--the husband's buddy, an Irish lecher played by Hugh Millais, and a seemingly dead ex-lover, played by Marcel Bozzufi.
As these men appear to bleed into one another in York's mind, so do they soon start bleeding into the cottage's Persian rugs.IMAGES defines Altman as the freest and most fearless of all American moviemakers.
An arty horror movie is the last thing one expects from Robert Altman - although, apparently, he had already tried it out with his earlier, little-seen THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK (1969).
The writer/director (itself an unusual combination for Altman, but it shows how strongly he felt about the project) himself does not think of it as such and, in any case, reviews at the time were decidedly mixed.Even if he was "inspired" by Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA (1966), the film actually feels closer plot-wise to Roman Polanski's REPULSION (1965).
Originally intended to be shot in Milan with Sophia Loren, the film definitely benefits from its picturesque Irish locations and Susannah York's fragile performance (which eventually earned her the Best Actress Award at Cannes) as a schizophrenic; she, too, was unusually committed and actually allowed a story for kids she had written - called "In Search Of Unicorns" - to be incorporated into the narrative!The film features only five major characters and, interestingly, these are named after each of the actors themselves: so Susannah York plays Cathryn just as Cathryn Harrison (Rex's daughter, a very natural performer who later featured in another strange film - Louis Malle's BLACK MOON [1975]) plays Susannah; Marcel Bozzuffi's character is named Rene', Rene' Auberjonois is Hugh and Hugh Millais is Marcel!
Of course, all this fits perfectly well with the film's theme and the characters' penchant to exchange 'faces' with each other in the mind of the disturbed protagonist; actually, this concept is pretty frightening because the lead character at one point decides to get rid of her 'ghosts' - but, not having a complete grasp on reality, one is never sure whether the victims are mere figments of her imagination or else real people!
Also essential to establishing the film's unique mood is Vilmos Zsigmond's stylish cinematography and John Williams' stark yet evocative score (interspersed with eerie sounds provided by Stomu Yamash'ta, a Japanese sound designer); even though his work here is galaxies away from Williams' renowned anthemic scores for the likes of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, he still managed to earn an Oscar nomination for it!.
Although Susannah York deservedly earned best actress at Cannes for her performance, and it was sandwiched between "The Long Goodbye" and "Mccabe and Mrs. Miller" this film, like "3 women" and "California Split", remain mysteries.
I can say more, but I will leave it at this: IMAGES is Robert Altman's neglected masterwork, a film that will scar your mind, if you have the strong countenance to endure it..
No. This is straight up cinematic insanity, something even the noblest of mind-bending flicks fail to achieve (with the exception of LOST HIGHWAY).In the end, the audience is invited, by means of provocative images, to make sense of the film themselves.
John Williams' (!) score is a major asset, with sound effects of all types punctuating the mood like an impressionist painting.Depsite being clunky in parts, IMAGES is must-see film to appreciate the depth of Robert Altman, or complete your knowledge of mind-blowers..
I'm a big fan of 70's films and movies like Robert Altman's "Images" are a good reason why.
Discovering what the images that assault her (and us) actually signify make for one of the best psychological thrillers since Polanski's "Repulsion."  Unlike the films of today, "Images" forces you to watch, listen and seek the answers for yourself.
Susannah York as Cathryn, a young, beautiful writer who tries to finish a children's book in a remote country home is simply breathtaking.
There is some dry humor in the movie - all five characters have the first names of the actors who played them: Susannah played Cathryn and young Cathryn Harrison plays a girl named Susannah, Rene Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi, and Hugh Millais played three men in Cathryn's life - Hugh, the husband, Rene - the neighbor, and Marcel, her dead lover (who was quite alive for a dead man, at least in her memory).
Images was beautifully filmed in Ireland by master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and veteran composer John Williams provided the score.
Susannah York, an interesting actress (though not so interesting as to make this artistic jumble take hold), plays the future author of a children's book about unicorns who is upset one night by repeat calls informing her that her husband is having an affair; she begins imaging other lovers in her husband's place, splintering herself off from reality.
Robert Altman applies the same widescreen canvas he had previously used to capture the chaotic communities of a Korean War MASH unit and a primitive Pacific Northwest mining town to the quieter but no less chaotic internal workings of a troubled woman's psyche in this unsettling and uneven psychological thriller.Susannah York plays Cathryn, wife of a distracted husband (Rene Auberjonois), whose affairs with two men (one a family friend) and her inability to have children become obsessive memories that haunt her and drive her over the brink of insanity during a stay at a quiet country home (the country is never identified, though the movie was filmed in Ireland).
Cathryn realizes that she can take control and kill off her unpleasant memories -- but at the same time she loses the ability to distinguish between reality and her own feverish imaginings.On a first viewing, "Images" is absorbing and oddly fascinating, but it doesn't hold up well.
"Images" came on the heels of a marvelous trio of films ("MASH," "Brewster McCloud" and "McCabe & Mrs. Miller") with which Altman announced his arrival as an important figure in American cinema, and he would follow it with four more ("The Long Goodbye," "Thieves Like Us," "California Split" and "Nashville") that would reinforce that claim, but "Images" itself is a weak link in the chain.The stars of "Images" are the mesmerizing production design and the sterling cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond.Grade: B.
Altman's little-seen psychological thriller, "Images," takes on the plot of a woman working on a children's book.
After the probability of this is dismissed, she retreats to a country farmhouse with her husband to work, where she is visited by a series of people from her past, as the line between reality and fantasy is continually blurred.Perhaps less thick with dream fog than "3 Women" but ten times more unnerving, "Images" is a film that truly hasn't gotten the audience it deserves.
Slick cinematography amplifies the reality (or unreality) of the film, with characters changing bodies between shots, and Cathryn's husband walking through a swinging door only to return as her dead ex-lover.
I would like to add that the eerie, bizarre atmosphere of this movie reminded me of David Lynch.We see the movie through the eyes of a schizophrenic woman, and just thinking that someone in real life can go through this gives me shivers.
It's also what I like to call a "hallucinogenic" movie, in which the dreamy scenery, the incredible camera work and the twisted dialogue play as if you were on a psychedelic substance.Susannah York gives a strong performance, and the beautiful Cathryn Harrison also make this movie worth viewing.If you like surreal movies, with a haunting atmosphere or psychological subjects, do yourself a favor and dig this good arty flick up.
In fact, the fragmented style of the film is quite appropriate to portrait the shuttered mind of heroine.The use of sound and the twin image of the character somewhat reminded me of "Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)" by Maya Deren.
Images is another striking, important, neglected film, although about as different as you could imagine from my other recent Altman rediscovery, A Perfect Couple.
Its closest filmic relations, and they are not even that close, are with other Altman films; but essentially, it is out there on its own, a glorious oddity, of uncertain parentage and with no progeny.Images, despite its obscurity and persistent non-availability, is situated quite differently: it is connected in a dozen ways to other films and film-makers; it has obvious parents and children; it is deeply embedded in both film history and its particular cinematic moment.Images focuses intensely on the mental breakdown of an upper middle class woman played by Susannah York, and takes place largely at a remote country house in a magnificent landscape (it was shot in Ireland).
It also has a good deal of Polanski in it (Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby; there are also strong affinities with The Tenant, which postdates Images).A line can be drawn from Images, backward or forward, to almost any film that depicts mental instability largely from a mentally unstable protagonist's point of view (Barton Fink and A Beautiful Mind, to cite two wildly different examples).McGilligan also positions the film in a quartet of Altman projects having to do with unstable women: That Cold Day in the Park; Images; Three Women; Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.Another affinity is with other highly polished, stylized, sharply and precisely visualized and auralized films: Losey fits there, so does Nicolas Roeg, and I was strongly reminded of Fassbinder's Chinese Roulette.
The cinematography of the justly celebrated Vilmos Zsigmond is eye-popping, both in the tricky-to-film interiors and the hypnotic landscape exteriors.Images also shares its DNA (love that phrase of Altman's!) with, and perhaps even exerted a direct influence upon, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, made just a few years later.
That's a signature card for his entire work.In an interview on the Images DVD, Altman reiterates his frequently-made point that all his films are installments in an ongoing vision and that assessments of the installments as being higher or lower in quality don't matter much to him: if you're interested in the vision, you're interested in the vision, right?
Pauline Kael set the tone for discussion of Altman in her early reviews, which went up and down like a ping-pong ball; loved MASH, hated Brewster McCloud, loved McCabe and Mrs. Miller, hated Images (and at that point she said that since she had discerned a definite alternating hit/miss pattern, she couldn't wait for his next film).
Perhaps inferior to 'Persona' in most aspects, Altman's 'Images' is still hauntingly interesting film with amazingly dedicated performance from lead actress Susannah York who is nearly in every scene of the movie.
The haunting and eerie score by John Williams complimented with percussion sounds by Stomu Yamashta over magnificent cinematography by visionary Vilmos Zsigmond alone is the reason to watch the film because it is fantastic visual treat.The film follows children's author Cathryn who receives disturbing phone call that suggests that her husband is having an affair.
Although the film feels like some twisted meditation, the story line is actually coherent and seemingly out of place details fall into right place by the end.Visually magnificent film with powerful and layered performance by Susannah York.
"Images" is a thoughtful evocation of psychosis, and cleverly includes the leading woman character's (Cathryn's) confusion about what is reality into the plot of the film.I saw "Images" in the mid-1970's in Montreal and haven't seen it since.
I have become a psychiatrist in the meantime and remember especially vividly the way the screenplay and direction take us into Cathryn's mind as it succumbs to mental illness.See this film, one of Altman's best, if you have the chance..
Of all Altman film's, Images has had the most influence on my life.
Susannah York and her husband moves back to their holiday home in Ireland where she has hallucinations of characters from her past - her reality and imaginary world then become increasingly blurred with horrific consequences.This is all a bit weird and if you chose to read a great deal into this, fine, but as a straight forward thriller where a woman, very well played by Susannah York, goes quietly nuts it's just as good.This is very atypical fare from Altman and it is hard to give 2 hoots about the characters, but it's worth catching for York's performance and the fun of seeing which way it'll go.
Robert Altman doing a psychological horror film.
Susannah York plays Cathyrn, a children's book author in need of peace and quiet to finish her latest work, and those solitude moments will be find at a country home along with her husband (Rene Auberjonois).
The problem with "Images" is that, after years of watching horror films or even psychological thrillers one gets easily fed up in seeing clichés after clichés.
Some parts brought me minor memories from Louis Malle's surrealistic tale "Black Moon" - it gets even more coincidental that Cathryn Harrison (she plays Millais' daughter and Catheryn's only ally) stars on both Malle and Altman films.
The film too was something of a surprise but I remember wallowing in the experience and being stunned both by the wonderful Irish landscape scenes and the vigorous and varied performance from Susannah York.
But for the most part Altman films this character piece as fluidly and with a level of concentration not any much more or less than his classics like Long Goodbye or Nashville or the Player.
At the same time he uses such spot-on timing with the camera movements and zooms and pans and seamless edits in service of Susannah York's inner being, as opposed to just taking down a kaleidescope-vision or ensemble.Indeed that's one of the more interesting things about Images, is its lack of an ensemble; there's only about four or five actors in the whole movie, mostly with York and her husband out in a secluded house in the countryside visited only by a friend (who's also her lover) and his daughter...
This includes a series of murders which sometimes aren't real (i.e. gunshot, camera), and sometimes possibly are.And yet I don't want to make it too easy to give Altman all the credit; on the contrary without York and composer John Williams (as well as the sound-man on the film, I forget his name) it wouldn't be nearly as successful an experiment.
I finally got to see this very,very rare 1972 Robert Altman.I was not let down ,I love it!One of the best depictions of the workings of the inner mind that I think anybody has ever done.Altman Really went  deep into surrealistic imagery,A really weird movie.Altman can make both straight forward films and films like 'Images'.The visual feel of the movie is Similar to Peter Jackson's 'Heavenly Creatures'.I wish Altman still made movie's that were as thoughtful, complex and sublime as this.Check it out!!.
And even if it were, there has always been another side to Altman; films like "3 Women" and "Images" single him out as a strong surrealist, adept and spooky imagery and menacing atmosphere.
Cathryn faces a deadly "image" of herself; she is the monster, her delusions fragments of her own warped persona.Altman hints at this by naming his 5 characters after the actors who play them.
It's more of a cross between Ingmar Bergman (Persona) and Roman Polanski (Repulsion), and shows that Altman could have been a completely different filmmaker if he had wanted.Susannah York plays Cathryn, an author of children's books who starts having hallucinations and erotic fantasies involving past lovers, including a dead one.
For all its simplicity, it's quite complex and unsettling in a mature way.Marcel Bozzuffi, Hugh Millais and the young Cathryn Harrison (who'd be in an even stranger movie three years later: Black Moon) give very good supporting performances.Complementing the movie is also John William's creepy, eerie, slightly dissonant score, the unsettling sounds created by Stomu Yamashta, and the cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond.
Story is about a woman named Cathryn (Susannah York) who is having a difficult time establishing what is reality and what isn't.
Finally Cathryn decides to rid herself of these images by killing them but she isn't sure which of these people are real or not.Altman fans frequently point to this film as his most polished piece of work and they may be right as not only is this technically superior but the actors are restricted to a very challenging script.
I definitely think that the young girl Susannah is a piece of the puzzle and it can't be just a coincidence that she looks exactly like Cathryn.
Also, the story that Cathryn narrates during certain parts of the film is a real children's story that was written by York herself.
The film stars Susannah York as Cathryn, a wealthy housewife and children's author waiting for her husband to get home one night.
Dear Robert Altman, Images was a relentlessly eerie and occasionally scary film about the mental disintegration of a woman.
Like so often with Robert Altman's movies, his films are either quite bad or terrific (not counting the mid-90s onwards, when everything he touched was crap).
"Images" seems like an experiment in opaque "art" cinema that Robert Altman just wanted to get out of his system relatively early in his career; so he throws in just about every bizarre shot and incident he can think of, without much regard for internal coherency or logic.
It is understandable that Images will be seen as a horror film about a woman who is not fully in touch with reality.
Robert Altman, who wrote and directed Images, shows what can happen when someone betrays another person sexually but cannot face that reality.Cathryn (Susannah York) is married to Hugh (Rene Auberjonois), a man very interested in hunting quail but not at all interested in making love with his wife.