Images **** (1972, Susannah York, Rene Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi) – Classic Movie Review 3293

Susannah York won the Best Actress award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival for one of director Robert Altman’s most intriguing but difficult films. It was Golden Globe nominated for 1973 Best English-Language Foreign Film.

She plays disturbed married heroine Cathryn, a schizophrenic housewife who questions her sanity when she finds herself battling actuality as her mind is haunted by troubling images of her life, of a former lover who died and of her fantasies, not knowing if these are demons of the mind or part of reality.

It is a dream, or rather a nightmare, of a film, with a screenplay by the director based on the star’s own book In Search of Unicorns. Beautifully assembled and orchestrated by Altman, it is a very offbeat film and not at all easy going, but with effort it is possible to get into it.

Made in Ireland, it is graced with glorious widescreen cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond (Bafta nominated for Best Cinematography) and resonant music by John Williams, which was Oscar nominated for Best Original Score.

Also in the cast are René Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi, Hugh Millais, Cathryn Harrison and John Morley.

Susannah York was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and died on January 15 2011, six days after her 72nd birthday.

Hungarian-born cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, winner of an Oscar for Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and a nominee for The Deer Hunter (1978), The River (1984) and the The Black Dahlia (2006), died on January 1 2016, aged 85.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3293

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