Two guys meet in a California poker parlor. They did not know one another before, and they don't know much about one another now, yet they know all they need to know: They're both compulsive gamblers, and the extent of the universe of gambling match the extent of the universe they care anything about. It is an insular world and a flat one, and they are always menaced with careening over the tipping point. They're the lions of this rambling, non-judgmental film by Robert Altman. Their names are Bill and Charlie, and they're played by Elliott Gould and George Segal with candid realism and unadulterated fussy weariness. We don't require any knowledge about gambling to grasp the adventure they pursue to the tracks, to the private poker parties, to the bars, to Vegas, to the gallows of failure, to the scene of triumph. Their obsession is so vigorous that it moves us along.
The disparity is between the deadened nomad of George Segal as opposed to the hysterical burlesque that Elliott Gould drifts through to obscure his hopelessness. We're amused by their hangovers, their bruises nursed with hot shaving cream, the loopy part-time prostitutes who supply them with breakfasts of Froot Loops and beer. We coast smoothly through the racket of their friends, nonchalantly presented through Altman's penchant for overlapping dialogue and downplayed visual openers, so that we're not so much shown new characters as guided to suppose we were already familiar with them. And since Joseph Walsh's screenplay is amusing and Segal and Gould are genuinely engrossing, we have a good time.
However then there are scenes that assume darker implications, like at one point, at the craggy fringe of sleep, inebriated, conquer, Bill and Charlie stick hopelessly to a bar and rather gravely bet with one another on the names of the Seven Dwarfs. And at another time, trapped with their winnings in yet another parking lot by yet another mugger, this one armed, they hand over half their winnings and bet him that's all they have. As California Split rambles along we find that Altman has not made a farce about gambling. He's taken us into an American vision, and all the people we met along the way felt and looked authentic. This movie smacks of a musty rotating fan.
As always, Altman stocks his movie with eccentric peripheral characters, people who have by some means grown to parody themselves. At the exclusive poker game, Gould stands at the bar, analyzes the table, and in a whisper sizes up each player. He's correct about them, but he and we have never seen them before. We know he's right as these people bear their idiosyncrasies and fates on their faces. So do the hookers played with a sort of kindheartedness by Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles. So does one of their customers who's a middle-aged man who likes drag as much as he's frightened of the cops causing a scene painfully mixed of tragic and comic character. Altman's movies invariably appear brimming and abundant, one way or another. We don't have the sense of a stationary screen into which painstakingly delineated characters are inducted single-file as much as a camera delving into a simmering surf of berserk civilized commotion.
I also saw The Long Goodbye just before this, which looks like a noir, sounds like a noir, but it's not a noir. I don't know what California Split looks and sounds like, certainly not a comedy, but in its own weird, subversive way, it is a comedy. What Altman comes up with is occasionally a sense of naturalism. At the end of California Split we've seen something about organized gambling in this country we hadn't seen before. He draws his visual approach from a deeply conscientious soundtrack, employing ambient sound with painstaking delicacy so that our ears inform us we're moving through these people, rather than that they're taking turns talking to us. Indeed, this is the first film ever to use eight-track stereo sound that wasn't shot in Cinerama. It worked.
Interesting Tidbit: The Tongue of the Great Blue Whale Weighs More Than a Full-Grown African Elephant.
The disparity is between the deadened nomad of George Segal as opposed to the hysterical burlesque that Elliott Gould drifts through to obscure his hopelessness. We're amused by their hangovers, their bruises nursed with hot shaving cream, the loopy part-time prostitutes who supply them with breakfasts of Froot Loops and beer. We coast smoothly through the racket of their friends, nonchalantly presented through Altman's penchant for overlapping dialogue and downplayed visual openers, so that we're not so much shown new characters as guided to suppose we were already familiar with them. And since Joseph Walsh's screenplay is amusing and Segal and Gould are genuinely engrossing, we have a good time.
However then there are scenes that assume darker implications, like at one point, at the craggy fringe of sleep, inebriated, conquer, Bill and Charlie stick hopelessly to a bar and rather gravely bet with one another on the names of the Seven Dwarfs. And at another time, trapped with their winnings in yet another parking lot by yet another mugger, this one armed, they hand over half their winnings and bet him that's all they have. As California Split rambles along we find that Altman has not made a farce about gambling. He's taken us into an American vision, and all the people we met along the way felt and looked authentic. This movie smacks of a musty rotating fan.
As always, Altman stocks his movie with eccentric peripheral characters, people who have by some means grown to parody themselves. At the exclusive poker game, Gould stands at the bar, analyzes the table, and in a whisper sizes up each player. He's correct about them, but he and we have never seen them before. We know he's right as these people bear their idiosyncrasies and fates on their faces. So do the hookers played with a sort of kindheartedness by Ann Prentiss and Gwen Welles. So does one of their customers who's a middle-aged man who likes drag as much as he's frightened of the cops causing a scene painfully mixed of tragic and comic character. Altman's movies invariably appear brimming and abundant, one way or another. We don't have the sense of a stationary screen into which painstakingly delineated characters are inducted single-file as much as a camera delving into a simmering surf of berserk civilized commotion.
I also saw The Long Goodbye just before this, which looks like a noir, sounds like a noir, but it's not a noir. I don't know what California Split looks and sounds like, certainly not a comedy, but in its own weird, subversive way, it is a comedy. What Altman comes up with is occasionally a sense of naturalism. At the end of California Split we've seen something about organized gambling in this country we hadn't seen before. He draws his visual approach from a deeply conscientious soundtrack, employing ambient sound with painstaking delicacy so that our ears inform us we're moving through these people, rather than that they're taking turns talking to us. Indeed, this is the first film ever to use eight-track stereo sound that wasn't shot in Cinerama. It worked.
Interesting Tidbit: The Tongue of the Great Blue Whale Weighs More Than a Full-Grown African Elephant.