A Wedding

Screening on Film

Directed by Robert Altman .
With Carol Burnett, Paul Dooley, Geraldine Chaplin.
US, 1978, 35mm, color, 125 min.

Similar in structure to his hugely successful Nashville, Altman’s multi-character follow-up focuses on a high society wedding in Chicago attended by a coterie of oddball characters. Altman ups the ante from his previous large cast productions with approximately forty-eight characters intermingling (and overlapping) at the event (Nashville, by comparison, featured about twenty-five characters). The film was coolly received on its initial release for failing to live up to the standards of Altman’s previous work but it has since been reconsidered, most notably by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, who adapted the film for a stage production.