robert altman's THIEVES LIKE US (1974)

this came out on DVD two weeks ago, but apparently not in Knoxville, so i had to catch it in lousy, compressed full-frame on cable. still, it floored me: as with most of his early work, Altman approaches a well-trod premise (here a tale of Depression-era bank robbers) from an angle that momentarily perfects it. he compensates for a necessarily restrained visual approach by playing with diagetic sound much in the way he did in MASH, but to a different end; where MASH's loudspeaker announcements helped reinforce an ironic distance, Thieves Like Us' omniscient radio crackle pulls us in emotionally while serving its more basic (and equally effective) role as aural set dressing, perfectly evoking a time and place. the film takes on an easygoing, naturalist pace, budgeting more time for scenes of silence and quiet psychology than it does for its antiheroes' antics, and accordingly telling an old story as well as anyone ever has. but it still takes itself seriously as a crime film, albeit a different sort of one, as Altman's primary preoccupation seems to be the state of mind that forces three men to define themselves according to their sociopathic behavior. the film's title weaves itself informally and offhandedly through each character's speech over the course the film, and even as the most sympathetic of the trio (a superb Keith Carradine) goes through the motions of grasping at legitimacy through the strength of young love, we realize along with him that he's not built to be anything but lowdown. it's sad, yes, but it's also as close as Altman has come to naked reality.