Rent 3 Women (1977)

Living Against the Clock - 3 Women review by CH

It had been too long since watching Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977), in which time it does not figure - one finds – in the knowledge of many who try to be sedulous in foraging through ever-proliferating screen fare. It is now, though, on DVD, with different labels offering a variety of extras.

How, though, does this film which has shimmered in the memory strike one when shown in its vanilla version? That was the form in which people were first surprised by it over forty years ago when explanatory matter was scant (and this usage of vanilla unknown). Put simply, pig-tailed Sissy Spacek, looking younger than her years, has fled from Texas and arrives for a job helping invalids at a Californian spa on the desert's edge. Here, she is guided by a colleague Shelley Duvall, who shows her such things as the strictly-checked time-clock and gives instructions in the art, or mechanics, of getting wobbly people into the hot pools.

It feels a prison from which daily escape is welcome. Altman depicts the Californian exteriors with relish. And yet this corner of the State soon becomes as much a trap. To use a current phrase, it is peopled by weirdos and misfits, some of whom haunt a bar run by Janice Rule, who also owns the poolside apartment block where Shelley Winters has a small place and has offered the extra bed in her room to Sissy Spacek (which the expectation she will adjourn to the rollaway when necessary).

These two have, of course, distinctive faces which suit these two hours' heightened reality (Sissy Spacek had been so effective in Badlands and Carrie). Shelley Winters affects bravura, suggesting that men are there for her asking, especially if she has dinners for which she creates some of the grimmest food ever to appear on screen

(cheese was injured by the nozzle of aerosol cans in the making of this film). With Sissy Spacek much put upon, life's shadow darkens in the sunshine; a counterpoint to which is Janice Rule's painting of strange murals upon many a surface.

What do all the details mean? Why does Shelley Winters's yellow dress always get trapped by the door of her open-top automobile? There is more happening here than one can take in, and yet it is never frustrating, but tantalising, as events take a tragic parabola, in effect a road movie which stays in one spot.

And what a delight to see again Ruth Nelson, who, prominent in New York theatre in the Thirties, had not appeared in films for three decades until the previous year's now-elusive The Late Show with Lily Tomlin. She was to appear again in an Altman film, 1978's glorious ensemble work A Wedding, which has also now escaped general viewing.

Altman himself was to endure eclipse. Buoyed by the success of Mash, he found himself carried on that wave of a new Hollywood which yielded such things as One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Night Moves and All the President's Men until running into 1978 and the Star Wars buffers. Altman kept working, and was, after a while, to find new general, sleek success with The Player and Gosford Park while Short Cuts and Cookie's Fortune were truer to his earlier spirit.

Startling to think that he has now been dead fifteen years. It still feels as he is with us, for his varied approach to film making ensures that he is not stuck in time. Not only is there an urge to watch again the little-known Images but also to seek out the Criterion Collection disc of 3 Women - an American issue - which contains his detailed director's commentary. Nobody, even Altman, ever made a film quite like this, even if - the three women being one - some claim that this is a West Coast Persona.