Quintet

Plot synopsis:
The story takes place during a new ice age. The camera tracks a blank, frozen, seemingly deserted tundra until two blurry, distant figures can just be made out. They are the seal hunter Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant companion, Vivia (Brigitte Fossey), the daughter of one of Essex's late hunting partners. They are traveling north, where Essex hopes to reunite with his brother, Francha (Thomas Hill).
Essex and Vivia eventually find Francha's apartment, but the reunion is short-lived. While Essex is out buying firewood, a gambler named Redstone (Craig Richard Nelson) throws a bomb into Francha's apartment, killing everyone inside, including Vivia. Essex sees Redstone fleeing the scene and chases him to the sector's "Information Room." Essex witnesses the murder of Redstone by an Italian gambler named St. Christopher (Vittorio Gassman). When St. Christopher leaves, Essex searches Redstone's pockets and finds a piece of paper with a list of names: Francha, Redstone, Goldstar, Deuca, St. Christopher, and Ambrosia.
Puzzled by the mystery, Essex discovers that Redstone had previously checked into the Hotel Electra, a gambling resort in another sector. He visits the hotel and assumes Redstone's identity. Immediately after checking in, Essex is given an unexpected welcome by Grigor (Fernando Rey), who is the dealer in the casino. Insisting that he means no harm, Grigor invites Essex (as "Redstone") to the casino, where gamblers are now heavily involved in a "Quintet" tournament. While there he meets Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson), who always plays the "sixth man" in the game.
Essex is unaware that the current Quintet tournament is a fight for the survival of the fittest. Those who are "killed" in game are executed in real life. Grigor and St. Christopher are aware that Essex is not the real Redstone, so they ignore him and focus on the other players. Goldstar (David Langton) is the first killed, followed by Deuca (Nina Van Pallandt), until the only two players left are St. Christopher and Ambrosia. Ambrosia, however, insists that Essex be counted as a player in the game since he has assumed Redstone's identity. Grigor agrees and informs St. Christopher that he has to eliminate Essex before he can face off against Ambrosia.
Essex and St. Christopher have a showdown outside the city, where St. Christopher is killed in an avalanche. Essex returns to Francha's apartment and finds the same list that Redstone had. Ambrosia follows Essex to the apartment. Essex slits her throat just before she is about to stab him with a hidden knife.
Returning to the Hotel Electra to cremate Ambrosia's body, Essex confronts Grigor to demand his "prize," since he was the winner of Quintet. Grigor reveals that the only prize is the thrill of the game itself. Grigor insists he stay and participate in future tournaments, but a disgusted Essex condemns Quintet and leaves the hotel for good. The film ends with Essex taking a long walk out into the barren distance.

Tags: bleak, revenge, murder

Review:
Altman's Quintet has to be considered more than just flawed: As so many other reviewers have pointed out, the ideas behind the film, even some of the choices in depicting those ideas, ought to work--and yet very little in this difficult film does.
The partially fogged camera lens--I remarked to my wife that it has to be the most distracting directorial conceit I've ever seen--never allowed me to get "into" the film's world.In general there are serious problems with the mise-en-scene employed here.
Just because there's no plasma rifles or space battles doesn't mean the film is bad...Altman's film is an unusual take on Science Fiction genre...More of a play than a film...more of an allegory than a linear storytelling...and it's just keeps getting better with repeated viewings.
I saw this movie years ago on a date while I was in college was completely baffled by it (although I think I was one of the few people who liked it a bit nevertheless).
(In fact, some have pointed out that the same emissions that are causing global warming may end up creating exactly the opposite effect; the continuous fouling of the atmosphere will eventually shut out the sun and a new, deadly ice age will engulf the earth.) That said, the idea of hoplessness - of people having nothing to look forward to except the thrill of their game, makes the actions of the game players understandable, even if they are not sympathetic.
By trawling the other comments about Quintet on the website, you can see that some people have a visceral dislike for the slow pace and unfolding of the film and a discontent with the actions and reactions of characters within it.
Having watched this film again just last night, I agree even more with Altman's vision of where the human race is likely to go - I think he is remarkably prescient.
Like 'Three Days of the Condor', this is a film that has, with the passing of time, become remarkably relevant to the world in which we live today..
I love 70s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I love Paul Newman, and I love Robert Altman movies.For the record, I loved Zardoz, which is generally regarded as another high-concept misfire, so I had hopes I would like this one in spite of the suspiciously low Rotten Tomatoes score.Unfortunately, RT was right.
Basically, an ice age has enveloped the Earth and everyone passes their time playing a game called Quintet - and people get killed over it.
There definitely wasn't enough there to stand on its own.On top of everything else, it takes itself really seriously, so it even fails in the "so bad it's good" category".I can't recommend watching this movie for any reason whatsoever..
I don't know why i had never heard of this movie before with Paul Newman and directed by Robert Altman.
I would like to know what Newman and Altman would have to say about this movie now and i guess i can see why so many people hated it even though i liked it..
Altman may not be in top form here, but he certainly creates a vision worth noticing.* A point of note - "Quintet" was filmed at the old Expo '67 site in Montréal, Québec, adding to the film's vision of decay and abandonment..
Robert Altman even invented a real game of Quintet for the film, and apparently people still play it.
This is a true example of film aleatoricism, the film was already green-lighted before Altman had been anywhere near the Expo, originally the idea was to shoot in Chicago.Another thing Altman makes an asset out of are his clearly wizened and ageing cast, it lends gravitas because the world of Quintet is one where no-one has been born in at least a generation, it's just something else that he made fit.
As regards what people have said of the Cold War, I didn't hear Altman mention it once, it's a film that works just as well now.
Seeing it again twenty years later, it sparkles as one of Altman's bravest achievements.Set in an apocalyptic snowscape so blasted it makes the Coens' Fargo look homy, it's ostensibly about a loner played by Paul Newman trying to fight his way to shelter or safety, blocked by the survivors' lethal betting game, Quintet.
(Moments of this movie, with their garish, one-of-a-kind production design, suggest the outre fantasias of the great Spanish B director Jesus Franco.) The cinematographer Jean Boffety softens the corners of the lens to create a snowbound, claustral feeling in every image, and Altman conjures scenes that could only have come from dreams: dogs on a snowy hillock feasting on the flesh of dead men in black, forming a living Motherwell painting; a concrete 411 directory made of painted glass charts, shattered and spinning, that tinkle like wind chimes.The composer Tom Pierson's work--alternately elegiac and horrific--equals the finest, most dissonant scores Jerry Goldsmith wrote for Peckinpah.
In QUINTET, Altman throws away all the gifts he'd come to rely on--and time reveals that this daring long shot paid off big..
Stinks On Ice. In a up and down career with all sorts of movies, this is Altman's one try at science fiction, and it clearly shows that it's not his forte.The film is practically incomprehensible.
It seems a disastrous combination of experimental theater pretentiousness and a major studio trying to jump on the post-Star Wars bandwagon (not that this film is at all modeled after that one, but you can imagine that the studio signed on hoping for a much different Paul Newman sci-fi film).
The story is nonexistent, and the characters remain strangers to us all the way through.Altman has packs of dogs feeding on dead bodies throughout the movie, obviously straining to make some sort of POINT.
Not only is the movie clearly filmed out in the snow and ice, but the interiors are kept cold as well.
The plot makes so little sense that there is no point in trying to follow it (something to do with a post-apocalyptic society centered around a game that turns deadly).
This, along with the "music" is, I believe, what provoked my feelings of nausea.About 10 minutes into the film, I realized how awful it really was but I kept thinking that, perhaps, Newman would, at least, be decent.
Now I know the truth: both those films are masterpieces compared to Quintet.I cannot emphasize enough how terrible this movie is.
But, why bother, since it is clear you can't join in and you wouldn't want to if you had the chance.Director Robert Altman is not one to beg an audience to like his films, let alone understand them.
And other times, he seems to resent the fact that someone might even be watching his film; as in IMAGES or THREE WOMEN, where the stories are almost personal monologues made for an audience of one, Altman.
Given the lively, albeit cynical nature of the rest of his diverse films, I don't believe that Altman believes in QUINTET either.
So when there's a movie that's deeper but you actually have to pay attention to it it's shunned.Quintet is like a lot of the new wave of science fiction that came out of the 60's (I found it especially reminiscent of John Brunner's "The Squares of the City").
There are several shots showing fish being harvested and processed at the beginning of the film, showing that there was an adequate food source for the people who lived in the city.And finally a mention of the Game: there was a feeling of depression to the movie and the inhabitants of the city.
Bookended by figures emerging and dissolving into a frozen wasteland and taking place in a bleak, hopeless near future where society presumably collapsed under the weight of some nameless disaster that left a world covered in ice and a number of survivors trying to survive on it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Quintet is some kind of dystopian post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller.
Not only it's not that but it's not really a fully fledged movie as much as a feature length essay on the basic philosophic idea that life can only be fully appreciated under the shadow of death, with a plot deliberately shaped as a chess game and dialogues often as wooden and posturized as something taken out of a Samuel Beckett play.I don't know what came first, the script or the location the movie was shot, a jambled mess of art installations forming the Man and His World Pavilion on St. Helen's Island, Montreal, originally built for the Expo 67 and left standing for years after.
The first half hour can be a jarring experience, asking the viewer not only to abandon all familiar semiotics and landmarks one uses to navigate through a filmic universe much like real life and accept in their stead a convoluted world seen through an annoyingly soft focused lens (no doubt slapped with vaseline on the edges of the frame) where booze for some reason is called booza, people wear old Venezian hats and use a needlessly complicated information center made of revolving glass leaves, but to consider this cardboard version of the future within some realistic context.
His little essay.The hopeless denizens of this bleak future spend their time playing a game called Quintet.
No character is developed more than a pawn in a boarding game, not even Newman the protagonist, curiously wooden and uninterested in what's going on around him, although Ferdinando Rey seems to be enjoying the hell out of his role.Once you get past the slow start the film develops into a peculiarly riveting murder mystery but it never quite makes the cut as something genuinely inspired.
Some of the ideas and themes explored are truly interesting, as for example the notion that it's the markers one carries that determine his identity, something he acquires or even steals (as does Newman who pretends to be Redstone by using his markers in order to take part in the Quintet game and discover who killed his brother) instead of being born with it, the five stages in life attended on all sides by the nothingness of death as explained by St. Christopher to his disciples, or perhaps even more so the idea of a judge tired of judging, wishfully ruminating how he would like for once to take part in the game instead of watch it unfold, perhaps follow the rules instead of interpret them.Obviously Quintet is not among Altman's best and if you'll get anything out of it or not largely depends on what level you're willing to engage it.
The best thing I can say about "Quintet" is that it's not quite as bad as I remembered it being on my first viewing.But that doesn't mean it's good.This weird, sci-fi thriller is not quite like any other movie I've ever seen, which I guess at least gives it the stamp of novelty.
On the DVD special feature about the making of "Quintet," it's clear that even Altman didn't know what the hell the movie was supposed to be.It's set in some distant future when the world is in the grip of another ice age.
The film was shot at the abandoned site of the Montreal Expo '67, and I do have to admit that this gives the movie some interesting production design elements, even if much of it looks like it's being filmed in an iced-over shopping mall.
Soon Newman is caught up in a deadly game of "Quintet," which all of the bored inhabitants play for lack of anything better to do, and the rules of which are never made clear to the audience.
...now I wish it had remained that way.WARNING: If you stumble upon this movie while surfing TV, keep surfing!This isn't even a good one time watch.
The plot points aren't clear in any way until the end when Paul Newman sort of sums them up, but then Fernando Rey tosses it all out by replacing the logic with a philosophical explanation of life, similar to the one John Houseman gave in Rollerball.
Especially during the 70's when he made 13 films in 10 years among them incredibly interesting but uneven pieces like "Brewster McCloud."   Don't get me wrong, he has made quite a few fully realized, even excellent, movies but this is more the norm.
Funny, calling a frozen sci-fi film with a bit of murder-mystery noir tossed in `the norm."  Around this time Altman was really showing his influences.
Quintet marks the only venture of both Paul Newman and director Robert Altman into the realm of science fiction.
Seals have survived and Paul Newman is a seal hunter on the outside.But hunters do need a little R&R and Newman goes to a futuristic city where things are so boring the natives have some kind of game played with six people and it's a kind of Russian roulette.
At about the same time I started to get into David Lynch and a whole new film universe opened up to me, Quintet is one of those movies.
I would love to talk to Altman about this...I grasp the plot now, and for it's time it really was way ahead of the game.
But the movie sears itself into your brain, and even though you'll never need to see it again after the first viewing (if you're like me), you're not gonna forget it.It should also be mentioned that one of the great feats of Quintet is featuring the very environment itself as an actorly presence, something to be reckoned with - or, more precisely, cold itself as an actorly presence.
If you like your sci-fi cold and bleak maybe this is for you.Quintet is the name of a board game played in a rather empty future.
Maybe it seemed like a good idea on paper: let's represent the cruelty, absurdity and meaninglessness of life with an isolated, post-apocalyptic group of people who addictively play a board game (never described, but apparently requiring no skill) while awaiting their inevitable deaths.
Honestly, people, there have to be 20 better Altman movies you should watch before you try to suffer through this one.
Wow, I never expected to see Paul Newman star in a film like this..
It's just a good sci-fi movie of people trying to pass the time playing a strange game, just because they have no more hope in living for the next day.
Photographed by Jean Boffety with a permanent filter that diffuses the corners of the frame, and shot almost entirely inside the abandoned installations of Expo 67 in Montréal (except for the opening and ending, photographed in frozen exteriors), duplicating the feeling of loss and ruin, while the wardrobe adds the sensation of timelessness and worldliness, "Quintet" is a nihilistic vision of the world that some see as the third film of a surrealist trilogy, also conformed by Altman's "Images" and "3 Women".
If you do that you'll have no problem following the confusing plot, but you'll still probably never understand exactly how to play the game of Quintet.
No. I wouldn't recommend it as a date movie or something to watch with your stoned friends, but if you're a science fiction fan this masterpiece of loneliness and coldness deserves your attention and perhaps a rediscovery by people who don't constantly look for the "Hollywood ending"..
There is nothing left for the remaining population to do but pass the time playing a chess-like board game and wait for the inevitable end.
With nothing else left to spice up their miserable, purposeless existence they take the game one level higher and play it to the death."Quintet" has been categorized as a "Science fiction" movie.
Sure, this was a weird one, but Newman's performance is solid, I like the weird, dreamy filter Altman used on the lens to give the 'looking thru a frozen window' effect.
And this is an unusual set of actors: ask yourself - mathematically, how bad can an Altman movie with Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman,Fernando Rey, Bibi Anderssen, Brigette Fossey and Nina von Pallandt in furs be?.
I watched it again a day later and thought, "Wow, this movie has a lot going on." I appreciated the underlying theme that life is more than simply surviving - otherwise it becomes a sort of twisted addiction of playing a game with death.
Altman apparently invented the game in complete form only to use it in this film.
Altman loves to deconstruct myths, whether he does so here I'm not quite sure.6/10 – An inferior rip off of Bergman and Tarkovsky's "Stalker", much of this film simply consists of people huddled around a game board or walking in the snow.
Newman was on auto-pilot the whole movie, with this constipated look on his face as he spent a good 50-60% of the his screen time simply walking around one of the most uninspired set designs I have ever seen.
As the game went so did the film.Vincent Canby may have said it best, "All great directors must be arrogant to the extent that they will follow their dreams through to the bitter, sometimes banal end." When considering Quintet was written, directed and produced by Robert Altman, Canby's statement is undoubtedly assured.The banality is felt increasingly with every coming scene.
"Quintet" is definitely not a film most people would find amusing or even interesting for that matter.
There is a world encased in ice, where nobody is doing any meaningful work, except playing Quintet, and the rules to the game are never even hinted.
The music is good and typical of many Altman films (like "3 Women", "Images", or "Vincent & Theo"  his best movies, interestingly enough).
(Not that this film's narrative needed a lot of stopping, because anyone who has ever seen it will know that Quintet's narrative drive has pretty well frozen solid before the end of the opening shot.) There are several of those moments in this movie.