Robert Altman's "The Company"

[julip]

I'm only now reading this forum after watching the DVD a couple of times through and again just now after listenting to the commentary track. It is very interesting to see the differences in opinion on the film...v. interesting.

I must say my reaction for every time that I've watched it has pretty much been thank goodness someone has finally done an artistically viable film that just happens to be about the world that I know and love instead of the pop crap that I tend to consider to be things like Centerstage. But then again I have always been a fan of Altman's and his slice of life approach to film making.

I was so happy and thrilled to see such a well known, historical piece like Tensile Involvement on film. It is one of those that I have always heard about, seen pictures of...it was thrilling to me. And the Lar Lubdovitch and Moses Pendleton works...stunning.

Blue Snake, you know...just not something that I cared for. But then again I'm not a Cirque de Soleil fan and they both have a similiar quality to them. I sort of just check it off as one of those things that perhaps a cultural thing. Maybe.

It's funny, my students will say that they've watching Centerstage or The Red Shoes and I'll sort of cringe and tell them to watch it for the dancing but not the choreography and most definetly NOT for the quality of the film. The Company I will suggest most definetly not only for the dancing and the choreography, but for the fact that IMO it is an extremely well done film.

[jimmattimore]

DRT was maybe the worst movie I've seen since "As Good as it Gets"

What a dog. If you see the ending of DRT , please explain it to me. "Gosford Park" was okay. I have not see 'Short Cuts'

I am not a major Altman fan.

My favorite movie of all-time is "Babette's Feast."

Which reminds me to ask? When did Woody Allen last make a watchable movie?

[Susanne]

About that snapped tendon: Didn't they say that she have had a lot of problems with it previously? So probably she just knew? I actually found that scene rather liberating since it wasn't as dramatic as the scene when Eric in Center Stage twisted his ankle. Instead she just gave up and said: "I snapped it". Right then I just imagined her thinking:"Why did I do that? Why did I push it? Stupid me, I really know better". I am not a dancer, but that is usually what happens to me when I get injured: no drama; just why did I do that?

I also liked the fact that with the arm, the focus was on "the show must go on" and not on her actual injury.

It was just so nice to see a movie without the usual Hollywood way of telling a story. However, I enjoyed the rehearsal/class scenes of Center Stage more.

[Odette]

Hi

I have just looked on amazon.co.uk and cannot find a DVD of 'The Company' listed-has it been released in the UK yet on DVD?

[Ari]

Odette, I think you will have to wait a bit longer for the UK DVD release, as the film just opened in theaters there a month or two ago.

[Old Fashioned]

An excerpt from Roger Ebert's review of Phantom of the Opera:

I recently attended a rehearsal of the Lyric Opera's new production of "A Wedding," and talked with its co-writer and director, Robert Altman. "I don't know $#!+ about the music," he told me. "I don't even know if they're singing on key. That's not my job. I focus on how it moves, how it looks, and how it plays." One wonders if Schumacher felt the same way -- not that it would be polite to ask him.

Heh. I guess that's what happened with The Company.

[dirac]

I do recall reading at the time that Altman was a hired gun on The Company -- he wasn't doing the project out of a vast pre-existing love for ballet or the Joffrey repertory.

Looking at his statement out of context, it does make a certain kind of sense, for him. As the director of the opera, he views the staging as his primary business.

[Mary J]

As an opera fanatic, I would hope the music would be considered more important by a director than Altman suggests! It isn't just incidental music, after all -

[Mel Johnson]

I do recall reading at the time that Altman was a hired gun on The Company -- he wasn't doing the project out of a vast pre-existing love for ballet or the Joffrey repertory.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now, this is news to me, and also new to this thread. Do you recall a source for that information?

[Helene]

In several interviews Campbell said that she and Barbara Turner wrote the script on their own, decided that the script was "Altmanesque," and asked Altman to direct. Altman had to be pursuaded to do the movie, but he was really their first and only choice.

That he was a neophyte to dance was illustrated in a piece that was published in The New York Times while the movie was being made. (It's now in paid archives only.) According to the piece, Altman was surprised and delighted at the most basic things he was learning about dancers -- that they were constantly readjusting their leotards, that they had holes in their practice clothes, that their toes were so bloody, etc. He also noted that he had to conserve the number of dance and practice takes, because the dancers would be exhausted if he asked them to repeat a scene multiple times.

[Mel Johnson]

Ok, I've got access to that in microform. Thanks for the tip.

[richard53dog]

Mary J,

I'm a frequent opera goer and I've been an opera fan for a long time. You would think that the music, and then the libretto would be the key ingredients, right?

This is less and less the case. The director is the one having the key spot. And a lot of the singers are being chosen for how they look rather than how they sound.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like tired , routine, musty productions. It's great if a production team can come up with a new slant on an opera to make it new and fresh. This gives the performance a kind of electric charge.

My big gripe is when the music is considered a detail, not to be concerned about and the libretto just ignored. That makes me angry.

American audiences seem more conservative and less willing to accept the really distorted productions. But in Europe, particularly Germany, the audiences seem to really accept novelty over any other criteria. I guess this is just a cultural thing .

Richard

[Amy Reusch]

OK, so my response is really late... I've only just now seen The Company on DVD.

I thought The Blue Snake very much like "Springtime For Hitler"... so "beyond" that it was fun... though not more than once.

I felt for the most part that the dancers (and choreography) were shot as if they were high fashion models... perhaps the-boyfriend's-point-of-view, not particularly aware of the movement involved... nor of the music involved.... On the other hand, the swing sequence was interesting for it's own sake.

I was fascinated by the Charthel Arther character but didn't know that was who it was until reading this forum! (and I had studied under her some 25+ years ago)

Neve Cambell's dancing was remarkably respectable, considering.

I was sorry not to see a portrait of the current Joffrey as I'm curious to see how that company has been faring. As portrayed here, the repertoire looked kind of stuck in the 1970s. I don't think Arpino's work was well served by the movie... I think I'll stick with the Dance In America memories.

The dancers looked like they had some exquisite facility. I wish the camera had looked at their dancing instead of at their physiques.

And I'm wondering about that Giordano tee-shirt one lead was sporting.... (there's a story there, I'm sure... the reference club lives on)...

What was with the studios? Are those the actual Joffrey studios? With those lousy mirrors? (I kept expecting some sort of dancer descending the staircase scene but it never happened).

I also found the dancers sleeping on the floor scene curious... was that character supposed to be the company manager?

I hope Barbara Turner's notes from when she was hanging out with the company to prepare for writing the script go into some dance archive somewhere. (I'd love to know the real stories the vignettes were drawn from).

MacDowell's shouting "Bravo" didn't seem unlikely to me... however his shouting other comments during the performance did seem very strange.

I'm glad the Nikolais piece was shown on screen and recorded but I found the staging somehow annoying.... I'm not sure if it was the music or the way the dancers rendered it, but I don't remember having that feeling watching the Nikolais company in the old Dance In America series... though I remember similar "environmental" sort of scores... if it were the music, it was if the dancers were trying to embody the music instead of just exist in it... but it might just have been the transposing the work onto ballet dancers instead of modern dancers...

And where have the out-takes been stored? There might be some really beautiful footage.

I wish the dance scenes had been edited as well as the trailer was.

[dirac]

Thank you, Amy, for posting your comments – better late than never! I saw the film again on cable fairly recently and my reaction was pretty much the same as before. I felt it was mostly an opportunity missed, although there are good things in it.

It's too bad there wasn't any alternate footage on the DVD -- were the extras interesting?

[Treefrog]

That studio was at one time the main company studio. By the time the film was shot, the company had moved into different studios, and returned to that studio for filming. The new studios were not much better, and arguably worse: the main studio featured several huge pillars smack dab in the middle.

Thankfully, the company has moved to much nicer digs.

As for MacDowell shouting "Bravo" -- this is an entirely accurate characterization. Mr. Arpino is very generous with his praise ... or his cheerleading ...

[Amy Reusch]

It seems to me that none of the dance world was interviewed on the DVD, but to tell the truth, I watched it very late at night by chance (my husband had noticed it and brought it home from the library). No... I'm sure I would have watched any dance interview. It was nice that they decided to put the dance footage all together as an extra, but I believe it was the footage from the film, not outtakes. There was a nice bit of Neve Campbell rehearsing, and some shots that had other cameras in the frame, but not much more.

I think we should have a poll "what part in Blue Snake would you like to have danced?" I think the sea anemones (or whatever they were) looked boffo... though the augmented leg costumes (zebras?) in the beginning would have assuaged any dancers who might be having a "feeling fat" day.

Treefrog, the comments he shouted that seemed unlikely were things like "get back stage and find out what's going on!" (or something like, I can't quote from memory).... shouting approval on the other hand is entirely believable.

[dirac]

Treefrog, thank you for the very useful info.

I think we should have a poll "what part in Blue Snake would you like to have danced?" I think the sea anemones (or whatever they were) looked boffo... though the augmented leg costumes (zebras?) in the beginning would have assuaged any dancers who might be having a "feeling fat" day.

Excellent idea! I'm not sure I'd opt for any of them though -- the whole thing reminded me of those horse costumes where there's one person in front and another in back, which always looked desperately uncomfortable to me.

I wouldn’t have minded ‘Blue Snake’ so much if we had ballet films coming out every year, but I had the willies thinking that people new to ballet might go to the movie and think, “That’s what it’s like?” That probably didn't happen, though.

[dnznqueen]

at least the movie attempted to get ballet into the mainstream, though it was definitely not the best example. that blue snake ballet is what a dear friend of mine would refer to as "php"- pretentious horse pucky-i think we all know what that means

[volcanohunter]

I finally saw this film on TV the other day. Not being a big Robert Altman fan, I didn't rush out to the movie theater to see it. I do prefer films with plots.

I am baffled by Neve Campbell's desire to include "Blue Snake" in the film. Perhaps her personal experience clouded her thinking, but there was never going to be any way to pass off a nearly 20-year-old ballet as a sensational premiere. You may find this difficult to believe, but when it was first performed the piece did get an ecstatic reception from audiences. The National Film Board of Canada made a documentary about the ballet's creation and it included a complete film of the opening night performance. You can hear the audience laughing and cheering with delight. The National Ballet of Canada brought the piece to the Met in 1988, and while a few viewers in the front rows walked out demonstratively, most of the audience ate it up. Anna Kisselgoff didn't exactly pan it either:

"Color and shape have much to do with 'Blue Snake' and its new-age music by Ahmed Hassan and John Long. Mr. Desrosiers's works are an acquired taste, but beneath the wackiness there is great imagination and seriousness.

"The theme of 'Blue Snake' is spiritual rebirth. Evil reigns in the form of the huge monster face, strikingly designed by Jerrard Smith. Good triumphs through a white god, part Shiva, part unicorn, who is expelled from a blue snake, the symbol of fertility and the flow of energy familiar in yoga as kundalini. The dancers, as fantastic animal creatures or embodying geometric shapes, are purified through transformation and regeneration.

"One favorite moment is bound to include the Muppet-like plants that come tumbling in. If the imagery and ideas are not always matched by the choreography (Mr. Desrosiers's most recent work has no such lapses), 'Blue Snake' is always marked by a poetic inventiveness. Sarah Green's dance as a pointy-headed creature attached to a balloon is a study in apt dynamics, the double duet between Raymond Smith's Triangle Man and his double, Mr. Ottmann, an essay in human duality while the whirling fantasy creatures tell us that a spiritual dimension may lie hidden where least expected."

In fairness, the screen version of the piece was hampered by the fact that the original music wasn't used. It was a percussion score with strong Balinese elements, throat singing and the occasional didgeridoo. Instead it was replaced by some gawd-awful quasi-Caribbean Hollywood score with string-instrument overload. Still, everything about the ballet screams 1985, and there was absolutely no way the piece was going to age well.

Incidentally, the bit where Neve Campbell's character falls down on stage and bangs up her arm is based on fact. As recorded in the NFB documentary, the original Balloon Head, Gretchen Newburger, fell during the dress rehearsal and sprained her wrist. She performed the part the next day anyway.

[bart]

Thank you, volcanohunter, for your post. To me, it was more informative and interesting than either the ballet (as snipped and edited for the film) or -- for that matter -- the film itself. I wonder why the score was changed. The music you described might have enhanced the filmed portions substantially.

[dirac]

volcanohunter writes:

I do prefer films with plots.

I’m inclined to sympathize, but then the only Altman picture I like without reservation is McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Thank you for the information regarding the score of "Blue Snake" – I hadn’t know that. (But as you say, it wouldn’t have made much difference.)

"The Company" is far from perfect, but I do think its approach was worth trying -- at least you get a better sense from it of how a company might actually work than you do from the melodramatic devices so often deployed in ballet films (although that doesn't make it necessarily superior). It was a big improvement over the other relatively recent ballet picture, "Center Stage," in that respect, although I preferred the dance selections in the latter.

[sandik]

For all that I think Blue Snake is pretty dated, I like The Company. I always feel with an Altman film that I'm getting a more nuanced view of the world his characters inhabit and the conflicting elements that go into human behavior. That this particular film is set in a world I know quite well just reinforces that experience.

I like Frederick Wiseman's Ballet for many of the same reasons -- his unrelenting tenacity as a filmmaker breaks down so many of the conventions we see in other documentaries -- it's not the traditional dramatic arc, but it's probably the closest we can get to actual cinema verite without breaking the laws about hidden cameras!