Brewster McCloud (1970)

Robert Altman’s follow up to his critical and financial smash M.A.S.H. was a critical failure as well as at the box office. But if it’s a failure, it’s an ambitious failure and never less than fascinating to observe. A strange young man (Bud Cort as Brewster McCloud) lives in the bowels of the Houston Astrodome building wings so he can fly. Altman’s main failure here is that he tries for too much, it‘s a feast all right but the film is just crammed with symbolism, imagery and an overdose of quirkiness that might even give David Lynch a headache. Sally Kellerman is either a strange bird woman or a fallen angel and there’s even the suggestion she may be Brewster’s mother. Jennifer Salt bizarrely masturbates wrapped in an American flag and in her next scene, she later returns in a red, white and blue dress and Rene Auberjonois as a bird lecturer (the film is jammed with bird imagery) slowly turning from man to bird simply doesn’t work on any level. Some of the topical at the time in jokes like Michael Murphy in a parody of Steve McQueen’s BULLITT as well as a parody of that film’s famous car chase may be lost on contemporary audiences. On the other hand, there’s so much depth and originality here that it can’t simply be dismissed. With Stacy Keach, William Windom, Margaret Hamilton, Bert Remsen and in her film debut, Shelley Duvall.