(1974)
4
Lucia Bozzola
Infusing his episodic narrative with an equally laid-back attitude towards events and emotions, Altman produces in California Split a "celebration of gambling" that is in itself something of game, filled with random incidents, trivial and serious, amusing and not, that emphasize the essential rootlessness of the gambler's life. Altman's signature mosaic of sound, produced for the first time through a multi-track stereo soundtrack, layers dialogue, gambling announcements, and Phyllis Shotwell songs to evoke the chaotic gaming atmosphere as authentically as possible. Gambling may seem more exciting than the depressive Bill's drab office job, but its pleasures are strictly temporary. Everything becomes transient, whether luck or marriage or even friendship between like-minded pals. California Split did not have much of an impact on the movie-going audience, but it marked Altman's move away from taking apart old movie genres (the war movie in MASH (1970), the Western in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), the detective movie in The Long Goodbye (1973), the gangster movie in Thieves Like Us (1974)) toward breaking down conventional storytelling in general, pointing the way toward the even more complex narrative experiments of his 1975 masterpiece Nashville.
California Split on AllMovie
California Split (1974)
