Assessing a film like That Cold Day in the Park is all about picking out the specific elements that would later define its director’s illustrious career. Taken on its own terms, this 1969 psychological thriller from Robert Altman is a compelling oddity, an increasingly perturbing series of events unwilling to commit enough to its own sordid premise. It’s a frigid, dour work drawn in muted browns and grays, confined mostly to a single household with protagonists that barely speak above a whisper or not at all. Still, largely, and somewhat unfairly derided upon its release, the film does convey some impressive cinematic techniques, and serves as a curious counterpoint to the later, more ensemble-driven work in Altman’s filmography.
The premise is fairly simple, if also unlikely. While out in the park, a 30-something year old wealthy spinster named Frances (Sandy Dennis) spots a young man, credited only as The Boy (Michael Burns), sitting alone on a bench. Later, she watches through the window as it starts to rain, and eventually decides to invite him into her home. The Boy refuses to speak, which implores Frances to obsessively project her insecurities and loneliness onto him, eventually resolving to keep him captive by any means necessary. Only halfway through does Altman lift the curtain slightly: The Boy is pretending to be mute and plans to take advantage of his desperate host for various resources. It’s only a matter of time before one intention collides with the other.
The greatest strength of That Cold Day in the Park is its cinematographic language. Many of the camera techniques displayed throughout the film are ones that would later become part of Altman’s characteristic visual toolkit, such as extreme zooms, dolly’s, and patient, distanced panning shots that track characters unexpectedly through various environments. This comes in especially handy because the majority of the film is confined to a gloomy, dimly lit apartment, so the expressive way that Altman moves the camera allows for a more visually engaging experience. A distorted shot of Frances and The Boy through a thick glass window early on suggests the presence of the audience as a voyeur to the film’s enclosed narrative, and in general, much of the film is shot from the perspective of an outsider looking in. Altman lifts the proverbial rock atop two separate perspectives of society and economic status – the wealthy elite of Frances and the working-class drifter of The Boy – bringing them together into inharmonious conjunction to reveal the seedy underbelly that subsists in both.
Another famous Altman technique also makes an appearance: overlapping dialogue. During an extended sequence in which Frances visits a gynecologist, the camera tracks her from outside the building as she traverses various rooms, all while remaining sonically fixed on an unrelated conversation between three women about birth control methods. Combined with repeated use of various other auditory elements, such as rain or a cold breeze, the film displays Altman’s knack for creating dense, lived-in environments. Another standout shot observes The Boy returning home from Frances’s apartment for the first time, panning upwards from outside as he makes his way through three separate floors of a house, interacting with groups of people on each level.
Technical elements aside, though, the film is rather dull. While the story does build to a surprising and disturbing conclusion, it takes a long time to get there, repeatedly lingering on increasingly repetitive sequences of characters doing not much of anything. As Frances, the often-compelling Dennis properly conveys a pensive, pent-up desire that gives way to unhinged mania, but the screenplay doesn’t give her much to do until the final ten minutes. Burns is less effective, admittedly stuck with a purposefully indecipherable character, but nevertheless largely a collection of wide-eyed stares and banal gestures. It’s difficult to understand what Frances sees in him beyond a figure on which to project her repressed sexuality, something Altman emphasizes through repeated imagery of his naked, or largely unclothed body. There’s even an implied pseudo-incestuous relationship between The Boy and his sister, Nina (Susanne Benton), a narrative thread that feels like a non-sequitur. The content is nearly always at odds with an unfitting tonal and formal rigor that insists upon a pensive tone for material that should be more unhinged. By the time everything culminates in one extreme act of violence, we’re already too distanced from the film to care.
Altman would go on to apply a similar formality and focus to films like Images and 3 Women with more critical success, and That Cold Day in the Park can be considered the first in an unofficial trilogy with those works. On its own, the film isn’t entirely unsuccessful, and proves to be more engaging than its obscure reputation and poor reviews would suggest. But it’s mostly notable for hinting at the types of directorial decisions Altman would later make more confidently. Perhaps most indicative of this is the final shot, a sort of twisted joke under which the credits roll. “I want you to make love to me,” Frances whispers repeatedly, kissing her terrified captive all over as he trembles and cries. Subversive, uncomfortable, and oddly hilarious in ways that are mostly intended, it’s clear something more cinematically substantial is lying on the horizon.
The post Oeuvre: Altman: That Cold Day in the Park appeared first on Spectrum Culture.