The Player
With Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward.
US, 1992, 35mm, color, 123 min.
Print source: Warner Bros
Like Orson Welles' Touch of Evil, a film self-consciously referenced a number of times throughout, Robert Altman's The Player lays all its thematic preoccupations and meta-fictional density bare in its opening credit sequence, a several-minutes-long, expertly choreographed tracking shot around a fictional Hollywood studio lot. The ongoing debate on the relative values of story craft and directorial virtuosity, the opportunism of studios eager for the next big hit, the perpetual recyclability of the Tinseltown production machine and the paradoxical anxiety over authorial plagiarism—all are seen by Altman as endemic to the state of the movie business in the early Nineties. In the thriller plot that follows—a purely insider affair in which Tim Robbins’ cheery executive is terrorized by an anonymous screenwriter whom he has unwittingly wronged—these concerns develop increasingly deadly stakes. Featuring an ever-expanding universe of familiar faces called upon to embody caricatures of venal Hollywood types, the mercilessness of The Player’s satire is arguably unsurpassed in Altman’s career. By the same token, the multiple films-within-the-film witnessed along the way all resemble Altman films, indicating that, for all the bitterness directed at the gatekeepers of the entertainment industry, some is still reserved for self-effacement.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Vincent & Theo
Fool for Love
Prêt-à-porter
California Split
Thieves Like Us
A Perfect Couple
A Prairie Home Companion
O.C. and Stiggs
That Cold Day in the Park
Corn's-A-Poppin'
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Gingerbread Man
Dr. T and the Women
Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
