Robert Altman: A fierce risk-taker

One of my favorite television shows of all time is “Combat!,” the one-hour World War II drama that ran from 1962 to ’67. It bucked the mainstream trends of the time with a gritty, black-and-white, documentary-style look at the lives of a small group of GIs who, week to week, encountered harrowingly real human conflicts.

The acting was top-notch. The camera work was flawless. The stories were inventive and gripping.

Robert Altman directed 10 of the early episodes of “Combat!” While he wasn’t the show’s only director, and he wasn’t solely responsible for the texture and impact of the series, he put his imprint on it. But what was even more significant is where he went from there.

Rather than use “Combat!” as a calling card to Hollywood in order to work his way into the rotation of routine studio assignments, Altman took his singular vision honed on that show and elsewhere and imposed it on a stodgy industry. The result was some of the most important cinematic works of the 20^th century and beyond.

Slide show   Robert Altman and his movies Legendary director left a long legacy of outstanding films, from “M*A*S*H” to “Prairie Home Companion.” more photos

When Altman died on Monday night in a Los Angeles hospital, many were left with an image of a man fragile of health but strong of will who stood proudly at the podium in March and accepted the Academy’s lifetime achievement Oscar, which was the only such statuette he would win after having been nominated a record-tying five times as best director. Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep doted on him like loving daughters, and engaged in a playful spate of overlapping dialogue to honor him, an Altman trademark.

But Altman will not be remembered as frail and humbled, but rather fierce and defiant, which is the way he pursued his life’s work in an unforgiving and often nonsensical business.

Inventing his own style

FREE VIDEO Altman dies Nov. 21: Director Robert Altman, best known for his films, "M*A*S*H", "Nashville," "Gosford Park," and, most recently, "A Prarie Home Companion," has died. NBC's Chris Clackum reports. NBC News Channel

His breakthrough came in 1970 with “M*A*S*H,” an anti-war comedy starring Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland that not only was a hit with audiences and critics alike, but it also helped to usher in a new wave of risk-taking filmmakers. Altman was hardly the first to encourage a naturalistic style rife with improvisation among his actors — Elia Kazan, among others, had made a career out of it in the ’50s — but his work contained more of a cynical edge that attracted hordes of admirers around the time when the country was becoming weary of Vietnam.

Bold filmmakers like Altman who dared to question American institutions of God and country were becoming the vogue. In an era of American cinema in the late ‘60s and ‘70s that would include works by Hal Ashby, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, Sam Peckinpah and many others, Altman was both a leader and an outcast. He was the standard bearer for the finest in independent films, but he also was so much his own man that he always stood outside of the movement in terms of style, approach and conceptualization.

Altman’s run through the ’70s did not produce the kind of box-office activity created by one Steven Spielberg or George Lucas blockbuster, but it still established landmarks. A picture like “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” in 1971, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, had a jarring effect on Western conventions much like Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” did two years before, only with character development and mood rather than bullets. “The Long Goodbye,” his take on a Raymond Chandler whodunit, and “California Split,” the quirky gambling dramedy, also helped to further establish his esteemed chops in the creative community.

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