Altman in the Making: 'That Cold Day in the Park' (1969)
Robert Altman has always been my favorite of the so-called “New Hollywood” directors. His movies breathe — sprawling, unpredictable, buzzing with overlapping voices. But until recently, I had no idea That Cold Day in the Park (1969) even existed. Discovering it felt like stumbling on a secret sketchbook from an artist you thought you knew — raw, strange and brimming with ideas that would later define his style. Released just before MASH made him famous, the film doesn’t swagger in with satire or spectacle. Instead, it seeps in, like the damp Vancouver fog. By the end, you’re left asking “what just happened?” — and that’s the unsettling magic. Even here, before his breakout, you can sense the techniques that would define Altman’s career: overlapping dialogue, ambiguous characters and an uncanny knack for turning setting into a psychological force. At the center is Frances Austen, a lonely, repressed woman whose only companions are the elderly friends of her late mother and a few ser...