Images (film)

Images is a 1972 psychological horror film directed and co-written by Robert Altman and starring Susannah York, René Auberjonois and Marcel Bozzuffi.Conceived by Altman in the mid-1960s, Images secured financing in 1971 by Hemdale Film Group Ltd., and shot on location in County Wicklow, Ireland in the fall of that year.Images premiered at the 25th Cannes Film Festival, where York won the award for Best Actress, after which it was released theatrically in the United States by Columbia Pictures on December 18, 1972.Wealthy children's author Cathryn receives several disturbing calls in her home in London one night; the female voice on the other end, sometimes cutting in on other phone conversations, suggests mockingly that her husband Hugh is having an affair.Cathryn's paranoia and visions become increasingly pervasive, and are exacerbated when a neighbor and ex-lover, Marcel, brings his adolescent daughter, Susannah, to visit.Hugh's corpse is then shown lying at the bottom of the falls (meaning that it was him who begged her to let him in the car and was killed when Cathryn, believing that he was her doppelgänger, ran him over the cliff)."[6] Filmmaker Louis Lombardo has read the character of Cathryn as a stand-in figure for Altman himself, and the film thus an exploration of the multi-dimensional creative process.[10] In an interview with Variety, Altman lambasted Hemdale for what he saw as their failure to properly promote the film, and criticized the company's head, John Daley.[15] The film received mixed reviews from critics; Roger Ebert gave Images three stars out of four, recommending it to fans of Altman's filmography but also writing that it "inspires admiration rather than involvement."[16] Gene Siskel also gave the film three stars out of four, praising the "extraordinary photography" and John Williams' "nicely disturbing score," although he found Altman's technique of mixing fantasy and reality "repetitious when extended for nearly two hours.[19] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker was negative, writing: "To be effective, the movie needs to draw us in to identify with Susannah York's hallucinations, but the cold shine of the surfaces doesn't do it ..."[20] Michael Scheinfeld in TV Guide gave the film a positive assessment, writing: "Spectacularly filmed on location in Ireland, the country landscapes become an intricate part of the psychological puzzle, as Altman juxtaposes images such as the "real" Cathryn standing on top of an enormous hill and looking down at "herself;" blood dripping onto a carpet that dissolves into the rippling waves in a river; and mysterious shots of horses, clouds, and waterfalls that echo the voice-over narration of Cathryn's children's story "In Search of Unicorns" (which was actually written by Susannah York).