Quintet

I saw Quintet on a Sunday afternoon in Northbrook, IL in the winter of 1978-1979. There was so much snow plowed badly in the parking lot that I had a hard time finding a space. When I got to the theater there was a strange little notice hand printed on a 3x5 file card that there would be no refunds to Quintet once you had entered the theater. I asked the ticket seller why and he said that so many people had left during the previous night's performance that they almost had a riot.

I knew I was in for something special. As the movie began I noticed that there were credits for the original screenplay and then for the final screenplay. Dissension in the ranks. There was inadequate explanation of where Paul Newman and Bibi Anderson came from and why they were going to the city. Indeed, the idea of hosing down Expo '67 in the winter and allowing the icicles to freeze gave it an other-worldly appearance. (I think that could have been Altman's attraction to the project.) Living in the Midwest during the winter of '78-'79 made me very sensitive to freezing weather. I moved to California the next fall.

There are two last items to consider: the dogs and the fish. The city was home to dozens if not hundreds of dogs. They scavenged for meat (often human bodies.) The malaise affecting the human population disabled them from disposing of the human dead. And finally the fish. There are several shots showing fish being harvested and processed at the beginning of the film, showing that there was an adequate food source for the people who lived in the city.

And finally a mention of the Game: there was a feeling of depression to the movie and the inhabitants of the city. When cut off from a natural human life that includes the having and raising of children, one can get depressed. An aberrant lifestyle that made a game out of killing others might result.

This is one of the many very good performances by Paul Newman, who was always underrated as an actor because of his all-encompassing beauty. The main problem with this movie, in my opinion, is the huge Vaseline budget they had. The whole movie was shot with Vaseline at the edges of the lens. I find that very annoying. When I make the effort to remember not to be annoyed by that "Vaseline experiment", I find it is not a bad movie by a long shot. The cast is brilliant, the futuristic plot is innovative for the period and the decor is intriguingly apt. The smearing of Vaseline on the lens applied to a whole movie may have been innovative, it was certainly daring, but I, for one, like to be able to look at the part of the screen I choose, and not be forbidden to have a clear look at the edges. CH

Quintet marks the only venture of both Paul Newman and director Robert Altman into the realm of science fiction. It was said of Newman that he could not do comedy, but he tried until he finally scored a real success in that genre with Slap Shot. But the failure of this film left him gun shy and he never tried it again.

This is one of the biggest downer films I've ever seen. It's a futuristic ice age, brought on by who knows what, but presumably it's a nuclear winter. Even during the ice age of thousands of years ago, the equatorial parts of the earth still sustained animal and human life, but apparently not here. Seals have survived and Paul Newman is a seal hunter on the outside.

But hunters do need a little R&R and Newman goes to a futuristic city where things are so boring the natives have some kind of game played with six people and it's a kind of Russian roulette. To win you have to kill five other participants in your game.

It's a sad turn to see what man has come down to. Which is one of the reasons I just could not get into this story. The atmosphere is bleak, the story is bleak, the people are bleak, it's all so bleak. No wonder this thing came up short at the box office.

It's a film that just about everyone thinks is never going to be on the top ten list of Paul Newman films, including me.

This is man's future, what a bummer.

I really wanted to like this movie--I like Altman, I like Newman. I like science fiction and I liked the idea. And since this movie seems to be universally hated, I wanted to swim against the tide and find the intellectual quality in the movie that others seemed to be missing. All that going for it, and I still hated it.

Incomprehensible drivel.

And what's with the vaseline all over the camera lens? Folks who like this movie are fooling themselves, just because you dont understand a movie doesn't mean that it's deep, it means that the director and writer didn't know what they were doing.

I had never heard of this movie until I saw it in an "obscure sci-fi" list. That was surprising, because it sounded like it was right in my wheel house. I love 70s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I love Paul Newman, and I love Robert Altman movies.

For the record, I loved Zardoz, which is generally regarded as another high-concept misfire, so I had hopes I would like this one in spite of the suspiciously low Rotten Tomatoes score.

Unfortunately, RT was right. This was just boring and terrible. Basically, an ice age has enveloped the Earth and everyone passes their time playing a game called Quintet - and people get killed over it. That's it; that's the plot.

The whole thing had the feel of a pilot for a TV show that was never picked up. You know, like maybe in the next episode, something interesting would happen. There definitely wasn't enough there to stand on its own.

On top of everything else, it takes itself really seriously, so it even fails in the "so bad it's good" category".

I can't recommend watching this movie for any reason whatsoever.