California Split

Customer Reviews:

Textbook story of gambling addiction.......2007-05-07

I will admit I am an Altman fan and a recovering compulisve gambler,so I feel capable of disccusing the theme of this film. It shows Gould and Segal's lives runing from bet to bet and paying the price along the way. It is not a sympathetic look at the world of gambling and has the usual Altman reperatory cast members and style to it. The ending isn't typical of gamblers real life stories, but this is Hollywood and it may have been the ending that the studio wanted. Both actors make their characters real to the viewer and it has a fun feel to it, even though it is not a comedy. It didn't reach a large audience, I feel because it didn't glamorize a topic that has so many ruined lives which makes it that much better. If you can find it, watch it, it is well done and gives you pause when you hear someone say, What goes on in Vegas etc.

Great early Altman film . . ........2006-11-21

Segal and Gould are a decidedly odd pairing in this 1970s movie about gamblers and gambling set in Los Angeles and Reno. Mostly amiable and larky with brief outbursts of violence (a fist fight, an armed robbery), the film takes a sobering turn when we realize that one of the two men is in seriously deep debt to a loan shark. Quirky and off-kilter, the film includes two call-girls, whose clients include a cross dresser.

Compulsive gambling (the kind that sends people to Gamblers Anonymous) permeates the film, which takes us to poker palaces, backroom card games, horse races, boxing matches and the neighborhood basketball court. Eventually, our characters wind up at a Nevada casino. While the conventional gambling story at the time followed the moral guidelines of an earlier Hollywood era, i.e., a downward spiral of loss and failure, this film has other things on its mind, and the ending that it works toward is unexpected.

Altman was experimenting with overlapping dialogue and multiple microphones on set with this film, and the complexity of the soundtrack is a treat for the ears. As in everyday life, we overhear snatches of other people's conversations on the sidelines. Meanwhile, a lounge singer we hear accompanying scenes early in the film appears later on, in person, when the two gamblers arrive at the casino in Reno.

Altman, Segal, Gould and writer Joseph Walsh gather to provide the film's commentary for the DVD edition of this film. Their memories aren't so reliable after 30 years, but we learn how the film was shot in sequence with a degree of improvisation (the drunken attempt to remember the names of the seven dwarves), which allowed for elaboration of the original script and greater character development. We also learn that the apparently improvisational one-handed piccolo player scene was actually scripted, as well as about Gould's reluctance to play it. Still terrific after these many years, the film remains a pleasure to watch again and again.

Lowlife Time.......2006-09-20

If you want to spend 105 minutes with several lowlifes, this movie is for you. No one has any class; a thoroughly seedy atmosphere. You can feel degraded merely by watching it. A big flaw is the lack of motivation for the change in attitude, at the end of the movie, of the George Segal character. At least Gould is as obnoxious as ever. Only lowlifes say they didn't find my review helpful!! Looks like there's lots of lowlifes around!!!

Not at the Top of My List of Altman's 70's Classics.......2006-06-19

I am a fan of SOME of Altman's work. Like many film fans I think SOME of Altman's 1970's films are as good as cinema gets.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, and Three Women are among my own personal favorite films of the 1970's.

I've been waiting a long time to see California Split and perhaps the long wait contributed to high expectations for when I finally saw this film my reaction was in the "so what" category.

California Split (though I was very excited to finally see this long unavailable film) is not a great film. It's not a misfire though and it is worth seeing for Altman fans like me who want to see every Altman film. And, I would add, the film will appeal to fans of gambling/grifter/confidence man films but there is nothing in the film to recommend it to a larger audience. Like everything Altman did in the 70's it is full of quirky oddball characters and conversations and the pleasure of all of these films is that Altman films have an atmosphere of anything goes and he is never looking to stress the usual things that movies stress, but always on the lookout for the offbeat note which in turns can be light or dark or a bit of both. A perfect example of this is the scene between George Seagal and the teenage prostitute which goes from vaudeville funny to just plain sad. Most directors would have been satisfied using the scene as a bit of comic relief but Altman is never content with just a funny interlude and Altman allows the scene to evolve into a much more complex comment on not just his male lead character's life but the minor female character's life as well. You can see the advantage of Altman's flexible plotting strategy here as he has the ability to pursue alternative plot lines and/or examine things from multiple perspectives. Altman does this incredibly well and perhaps with greater effect in Nashville but for Altman fans who enjoy seeing a film maker make discoveries while shooting I think this is one of those interesting moments that make the film worthwhile.

Altman is certainly the champion of the marginal character and the marginal community. I think what appeals to me about many of Altman's 70's films are not just the quirky lead characters but the fact that those quirky leads are surrounded by an entire cast of quirky alternative players that often are just as interesting as the leads. What makes some of Altmans films so great is the way those quirky major and minor players play off each other and there are few film makers who can simulate real-life sociability as well as Altman. Some of Altman's films rely on large casts (as far as star power goes) and some small but all of Altman's films are ensemble pieces. The problem with some of Altman's ensemble pieces is that they just feel cluttered and chaotic(Brewster McCloud, Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Show, The Wedding). Another pitfall of ensemble pieces is that each one is a gamble because each one hinges on the ability of the cast to play off each other in a spontaneous way but you really cannot construct spontaneity nor predict what kind of results you will get. Thus some of Altmans "spontaneous" scenes work and some of these scenes feel like tiresome acting class moments (or failed SNL skits that never pay off). California Split has a lot of those scenes that don't seem to have any pay off.

Of course the pay off in an Altman film is when all of the various elements that Altman has thrown together (characters, scene, atmosphere, music, multiple perspectives/plot lines/realites, overlapping conversations)all come together and coherently blend into something that transcends the sum of all of those parts. For me this happened in MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, and to a lesser extent in Long Goodbye and Three Women. For my money California Split is not an unqualified hit but it never altogether misses either. It is worth a gamble because it has all of those elements Altman fans love (including risk) BUT there are far fewer moments when all of those elements work together as in some of Altman's other more tightly structured work thus the film feels uneven. Some film fans find that uneveness so often found in Altman's projects to be one of the appeals as if this uneveness is proof of authenticity. I can understand that view and share it to a certain extent. This film follows the logic, if not always the coherence, of a short story as its not so much about a character but about a type of obsession and the behavior associated with that type of obsession. Old Hollywood films used to galmourize gangsters and gamblers obsessiveness (and early 70's cinema was doing the same) but Altman, to his credit, never glamourizes. There is no real character development here and thus no real plotting is necessary and the film ends as many short stories end: with a brief epiphany, a pretty small pay off.

It is not just that this film is not tightly plotted (for that too is one thing Altman fans may value as a point of originality instead of a liability) rather my minor disappointment with this film is due to the fact that the lead and minor characters are not that interesting ultimately and thus the interaction we get is not that interesting (save for a few scenes like the ablve mentioned scene between Seagal and prostitute). The characters are not fully fleshed out nor are the atmospheres they find themselves in fully realized or explored. I think a lot of the background and support characters (the prostitutes, the bartender at the poker match as well as the other players at the casino poker table, and the Jeff Goldbloom character) could have been given more to say and do. Also Gould here is not the clever countercultural figure and team player that he was in MASH, nor is he the interesting counter-countercultural detective and smitten sap that he was in Long Goodbye, here he is just a kind of one-man-show that tries (albeit unsuccessfully) to bring a straight-man into his act. Therefore my lack of enthusiasm for this film is based not on whether the film works or doesn't but just on my lack of enthusiasm for these characters which for me were too thin to carry my interest through an entire film. The final scene of the film in which Seagal's "Bill" finally sees Gould's "Charlie" for what he is, I think, sounds this same sentiment. The film attempts to answer the question, "can you make an interesting film about hollow characters?" I think for those who think that you can then you may find this film intriguing.

Worth seeing but only after you have seen Nashville, MASH, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Long Goodbye, Three Women. California Split succeeds but just in a much humbler way than some of the other Altman films of this period.

4 stars would be 4 1/2 stars with missing scenes back in.......2006-06-02

I have really liked this movie for years, but this version is missing some scenes, and I mourn the loss. As I recall from seeing the longer version many years ago, we are missing: more Segal/Goldblum interaction at the magazine office, more gambling scenes during the winning streak (certainly some of the blackjack scenes are gone), and most importantly for me, the great repartee between Gould and the piano lady when Gould has no money to gamble but isn't allowed to watch Segal during the winning streak. In particular, I remember the piano lady saying something like, "Hey, where's my tip jar?" and we assume that Gould took it half-jokingly (and returned it?) as he tries to get some money to gamble. He needs money and not just the Milky Way bar he tries to bet. This is still a Top 250 personal favorite movie (as are several other Altman movies like M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller), but without the deleted scenes, I doubt I will feel compelled to watch California Split again for another few years.

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