California Split

 I saw California Split when it was a new movie, back in 1974.  A lifetime has passed since that screening and the movie is now as remote from 2022 as California Split would have been from Lon Chaney and Mary Philby in The Phantom of the Opera made 48 years before Robert Altman's gambling picture.  Of course, for me, an incalculable gap of time and style exists between California Split and the Lon Chaney movie.  But California Split, a film that now seems an extreme example of neo-realism after the model of the great Italian directors of the forties and fifties, still seems fresh, relevant, and not at all dated.  This is a characteristic of movies that intend a realistic portrayal of life at the time that they were made.  These films don't really age in the way that pop culture and escapist movies age -- genre films tend to show the ravages of time; they are designed to make money off current trends and fashions and, therefore, become quickly dated.  By contrast, an intensely realistic film like California Split, if it was interesting to audiences when it was produced, will remain vibrant as a sort of documentary, that is, a portrayal of a slice of life as it existed in 1974.  Take, for example, the film's soundtrack.  Altman doesn't use any movie-music composed for the picture.  Rather, we hear some contemporary tunes played on radios used by on-screen characters and the Cheech and Chong song "Basketball Jones" heard in the background in one scene dates the action to 1973.  ("Basketball Jones' was a peculiar novelty tune that charted at number one for several weeks in 1973 -- the highly ghetto and falsetto lyrics are sung by Cheech Marin accompanied by an all-star band including Carole King, George Harrison, Billy Preston and Ronnie Spector as part of a "cheerleader" chorus.) Music specially composed for a film as its score tends to date the period to the styles prevalent at the time the movie was made.  By contrast, the tunes we hear in the background of Altman's picture have a documentary character -- this is what people were listening to at the time the movie was produced;they aren't imposed on the action but are part of the action.  A lounge singer named Phyliss Shotwell performs some old Jazz and Blues standards -- these musical interpolations seem to be accompanying music at first, but in the film's last half hour we see the singer actually performing and it's revealed that this music isn't really "incidental" music but is diegetic, that is, music that the characters are ostensibly listening to in the scenea showing them.  (It's hard to keep in mind the distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic, that is, incidental music:  diegetic music is part of the narrative, something that can be heard by the characters in the film -- that is, music that they experience on a radio or in a live performance; non-diegetic music is scored and "incidental," that is, a commentary of the what we see on film.)  Altman at the height of his neo-realist style rarely uses incidental or non-diegetic music; typically, the music in his pictures is something that people on-screen are hearing.  Altman seems to have regarded his diegetic use of music as a "fair use" not requiring the purchase of music rights.  This interpretation of the law, shared by the studios apparently, wasn't correct -- people sued and California Split was tied-up in litigation over its music for several decades until, at last, the controversy was settled.  Phyllis Shotwell who provides the sardonic cabaret Blues and Jazz accompaniment is a hard-faced, middle-aged broad who plays piano next to a big wheel of fortune in the climactic sequence.  With her growled parenthetical remarks interposed in the lyrics that she sings and her cynical aplomb, she reminds me of Lou, the pianist at Nye's in old St. Anthony (although I don't recall Lou singing.)  Altman's commitment to realism extends famously to his soundtracks on which there are multiple layers of conversation recorded all at the same time -- it's difficult sometimes to know what we should listen for in the labyrinth of words.  No one declaims and no one speaks theatrically -- everything is recorded as if we were present in the crowded bar or casino and heard what was happening without sounds being filtered for emphasis (although Altman takes care to make sure we hear what is necessary to his rather formless plots).  I recall that California Split, a highly regarded film at the time, was a disappointment to me -- I couldn't figure out what it was about or, even if the movie was about anything at all.  I admired (and still admire) the acting but the picture is, perhaps, so extreme in its commitment to displaying the inchoate, even chaotic, aspects of experience that, it remains, 48 years later somewhat daunting.

The film's narrative is strange, full of false starts and dead ends.  Two men stroll separately into a California casino.  One of them, Charley Waters (Eliot Gould) is a professional gambler, apparently -- although he seems more like some sort of hapless gambling addict.  Charley is a risk-taker, supremely self-confident and recklessly brash.  The other man, Bill Denny (George Segal) is, at first, a casual gambler -- he's playing hooky from a job he despises:  he works for a magazine called California Trails, a publication seemingly modeled on Arizona Highways.  (His boss in an incomprehensibly young looking Jeff Goldblum who appears in one scene as an intensely Semitic publisher -- Altman was like Fellini; he had a good eye for faces and the film is full of people who look vaguely familiar and, later, went on to more visible parts in TV and the movies.)  The plot trajectory involves a rather puzzling role reversal; Bill, who gets into trouble with Charley, becomes a highly focused and, at least, transiently successful gambling professional; Charley who starts out this "buddy" film as the dominant partner ends up a pathetic kibitzer in the movie's last half-hour.  To call the film's narrative a "plot" is generous -- Altman doesn't articulate a conventional narrative and there are lots of gaps in the story that the viewer has to fill in.  Most of his sequences are intentionally off-point and not designed to convey narrative information -- the film's emphasis is on character, not character development.  In this regard, the movie adheres to real life:  when someone does something out of character, we don't get an exposition of the steps leading to that person's unusual conduct -- it just happens and this is how Altman presents things in his movies.  Bill and Charley get into a dispute with an aggressive, greasy hoodlum with whom they are playing cards in a casino.  The hoodlum, with his buddies, beats them up and steals their earnings.  Charley takes Bill to his apartment that he shares with two rather pathetic call-girls. (He seems more of a roommate than a boyfriend.)  In a homo-erotic scene, Charley smears shaving lotion as an analgesic on Bill's bruised ribs and chest -- the call-girls think his solicitude is amusing and suggestive.  Bill is seduced by Charley's insouciance and infectious recklessness.  Like lovers, they meet at racetracks and other gambling venues; Charley generally wins -- it seems he can make a precarious living by gambling.  Bill, who has become addicted to wagering, loses heavily.  Apparently, he's fired from his job and ends up destitute.  He has borrowed money from Sparks, the least fearsome loan shark in film history.  Sparks, who is on crutches, whines to Bill that he has to pay back his debt -- Charley ducks the obligation and Sparks sends an enforcer:  Altman  is barely interested in this aspect of the movie -- the enforcer is just a menacing voice behind a door.  The younger and more innocent of the two hookers (she's a bit like Shelley Duvall in McCabe and Mrs. Miller) cautiously asks Bill to make love to her; he makes a half-hearted effort but can't figure out how to get her out of her clothing and, then, the other call-girl appears interrupting them.  Humiliated, Bill flees the apartment.  The two girls have acquired a couple of johns who are taking them to Hawaii and, as they say in Icelandic sagas, "now, they are out of the story."  This part of the narrative simply dead-ends.  The girls talk a little wistfully about their hopes that the Hawaii trip won't be too miserable and, after that scene, we never see them again -- the point, it seems, is that the girls are gamblers as well, wagering themselves on sexual adventures that may or may not turn out to be lucrative.  (There's a throwaway scene intended as comedy involving a transvestite; this is the one part of the movie that has dated -- the scene comes across as cruel and offputting.)  Bill desperately raises money to invest in a high-stakes game in Reno.  Charley encounters the thug who beat him up earlier and took his money.  He gets into a fight with the man and knocks him down -- after administering a few punitive pay-back kicks, he takes the guy's money and invests it in Bill's venture.  In Reno, Bill focuses intensely on the game, won't drink, and, in fact, wins big. On a streak, he then plays blackjack, roulette and craps.  It seems that he can't lose.  In the end, he makes $88,000 split two-ways.  Bill is exhausted and appalled that his success at gambling doesn't carry any kind of thrill or, even, intense emotion.  As he and Charley are splitting up the money, Bill says:  "I didn't fell anything."  Charley replies that he knows:  "It don't mean a fucking thing," he responds.  Charley plans more gambling adventures but Bill says the he's done with it and won't accompany him.  

Altman stages everything as undramatically as possible.  The big climax is effective but it's not filmed in an emphatic or even expressive manner.  Altman's characteristic technique is show that these places where people are supposedly having fun are deeply sad -- there is a profoundly melancholiac edge to much of Altman's best work.  The boys go to a boxing match and Charley gambles with all the people around him -- he even wins a hat from someone sitting next to  him.  (Charley will wager on anything.)  It's a big scene, shot realistically in what seems like a real, if very low-rent, boxing arena.  But the heart of the scene is a brief shot of one of the boxers -- he's just a Mexican teenager with an infinitely sad look on his face; it's as if he'd rather be anywhere but here in the ring getting his brains knocked out.  A hooker in a bar can't inspire any interest in her -- she's aging and a loud-mouth; she calls everyone faggots.  The gentle call girl keeps her eyes shut during the boxing match -- apparently, the violence is too much for her, although she cheers as lustily as everyone else.  A janitor pauses in his tasks cleaning a casino floor to play a little of his hard-earned money in a slot machine.  The trip to Reno takes place in a wintry landscape -- a bus ride over Donner pass.  Everything is the opposite of glamorous.  The other gamblers are rude fat women, old ladies, and bums of various sorts.  Even the high-roller game is staged without any sense of drama or consequence -- the most loquacious of the players is an old medical doctor who rambles on about gambling in 1926 and a big loss that he experienced then (he's not senile but the next thing to.)  The other gamblers are callow kids, a Chinese guy, and one charismatic figure "Amarillo Slim", apparently a real professional poker player.  (There's an excellent sequence in which Charlie "reads" the poker players in the high-stakes game much to the amusement of a cynical bartender who confirms many of his observations.)  The casinos are ugly and full of ugly people.  In a topless bar two women have an inscrutable conversation -- one of them is naked from the waist down:  this sort of imagery was apparently something that interested Altman --there's a celebrated scene in Short Cuts in which Julianne Moore irons a skirt wearing no pants.  Altman wrings a good deal of pathos out of the climactic gambling orgy in Reno.  Charley's had his nose broken and has two black eyes and a big garish cross of bandage on his nose -- he looks ridiculous.  Bill thinks Charley will ruin his concentration and so won't even give him money from their stake so that he can amuse himself playing the slots.  This reduces Charley to a sort of ghostly figure wandering around in the background as Bill wins again and again.  The rift in their friendship is obvious and painful -- these ending scenes justify the sequence early in the film involving the shaving cream.  The final ten minutes seems to take place at dawn in the Reno casino; there's a big vacuum-cleaner abandoned on the carpet.

Extreme (even excessive) realism of the sort exemplified by California Split may seem ultimately nihilistic.  We see everything and it rings true but it doesn't mean anything (a conclusion announced explicitly at the movie's end) -- this is because the real world doesn't ultimately mean anything either; it just is.  The film's revelation is that all of Charley's gaiety and reckless abandon is also a charade:  "it doesn't mean a fucking thing," Charley says.