Event

Nashville

Over the course of a few hectic days, numerous interrelated people prepare for a political convention as secrets and lies are surfaced and revealed.

"The funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen. Robert Altmans 1975 movie is at once a Grand Hotel-style narrative, with twenty-four linked characters; a country-and-Western musical; a documentary essay on Nashville and American life; and a meditation on the love affair between performers and audiences. In the opening sequences, when Altmans people start arriving, piling up in a traffic jam on the way from the airport to the city, the movie suggests the circus procession at the non-ending of Fellinis 8. But Altmans clowns are far more autonomous; they move and intermingle freely, and the whole movie is their procession. The basic script is by Joan Tewkesbury, but the actors were encouraged to work up material for their roles, and not only do they do their own singing but most of them wrote their own songsand wrote them in character. The songs distill the singers lives, as the pantomimes and theatrical performances did for the actors in Children of Paradise. With Ronee Blakley, as a true folk artist and the one tragic character. " Pauline Kael, The New Yorker