Nashville

Release

Box office

The film was a box-office success, with theatrical rentals of $6.8 million in North America by 1976.[70] According to a piece in Film Comment "it is still amazing to me that the impression was so prevalent in the cultural reaches of Manhattan that Nashville was one of the year's commercial blockbusters rather than, as it was, the twenty-seventh highest-grossing film of the year."[71] The film grossed approximately $10 million in the United States.[2]

Critical response

Nashville received significant attention from critics, with Patrick McGilligan of The Boston Globe writing that it was "perhaps the most talked about American movie since Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.[72] Pauline Kael, film critic for The New Yorker, described it as "the funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen".[73] Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, and Leonard Maltin gave the film four-star reviews and called it the best film of 1975. In his original review, Ebert wrote "after I saw it I felt more alive, I felt I understood more about people, I felt somehow wiser. It's that good a movie."[74] On August 6, 2000, Ebert included it in his The Great Movies compilation.[75]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised the film's music as "funny, moving and almost nonstop" as well as its "well‐defined structure, [in which] individual sequences often burst with the kind of life that seems impossible to plan."[76] Writing for the New York Daily News, Harry Haun praised the film's attention to detail and characterization, noting: "I have seen Nashville 4½ times, and I'm still discovering dimensions that had eluded me."[77] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times praised the humor, which he noted as ranging "from slapstick to satire", and commended the film as "the most original and provocative American movie in a very long time."[78]

According to film critic Ruth McCormick, however, after an initial wave of praise, a critical backlash ensued. "Robert Mazzocco in The New York Review of Books, Greil Marcus in The Village Voice and John Malone in The New York Times wrote articles that ranged from debunking the hype and calling Nashville superficial and overrated, to absolutely hating the film for its aesthetic shortcomings or its purported pessimism, cynicism and sexism."[79]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 89% of 76 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.70/10. The website's consensus reads: "Robert Altman captures the bravado and cynicism of the American dream in Nashville, a sprawling epic bursting with vivid performances and an unforgettable soundtrack."[80] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 96 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[81]

Controversy

The film was widely despised by the mainstream country-music community at the time of its release; many artists believed it ridiculed their talent and sincerity.[29] Altman felt they were mad because he chose not to use their music in favor of letting the actors compose their own material. However, he stated the movie has since become popular in the city among more recent generations.[82]

The film garnered further attention in 1980 due to its climactic shooting scene of Barbara Jean, as it predated, but eerily mirrored, what would be the murder of John Lennon. In an interview on 2000 DVD release, Altman remarks that after Lennon's death, reporters questioned the director about Nashville and its harbinger of the assassination of a music star.

Robert Altman: "When John Lennon was assassinated, I got a call immediately from the Washington Post and they said, 'Do you feel responsible for this?' and I said 'What do you mean, responsible?' 'Well, I mean you're the one that predicted there would be a political assassination of a star.' And I said 'Well, I don't feel responsible,' but I said, 'but don't you feel responsible for not heeding my warning?' The statement here is, these people are not assassinated because of their ideas or what they do. They're assassinated to draw attention to the assassin. And in political assassinations, in their sort of warped minds, they know that they are going to have a certain amount of people who said 'that son of a bitch [the politician] should have been shot,' because there's such heat about it. But actually what they are doing is killing somebody who's in the public eye and is some sort of an icon. Because this feeling that by doing that, committing that assassination they draw the attention to themselves, and they make themselves consequently important. Ah, and it's no surprise to me, the Lennon assassination, because this is what all that is, and I don't think we have seen the end of it either."[82]

Home media

Paramount Home Video released Nashville on VHS and DVD in 2000.[83] In 2016, The Criterion Collection released a Blu-ray edition of the film featuring a new scan and supplemental features, including an archival commentary with Altman as well as archival interviews, and a new documentary piece.[83]


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