QUINTET-(1979)-I just got back from "Dunkin' Donuts" where while enjoying a hazelnut coffee and a sesame bagel I spent the last half an hour trying to figure out just what the heck was going on in this movie! Recently deceased Paul Newman (in his only movie in '79) stars in it and the late Robert Altman (who seemed to have made an incredible amount of films in a very short time) co-wrote and directed it. It kind of seems like an Igmar Bergman Sci-Fi movie if Bergman made a Sci-Fi movie and didn't know what he was doing!
OK, so I know there is a kind of artsy cult build around this movie (and most of the director's other work) but I really don't get this at all! Altman did gather quite an international cast for this strangeness though including Bergman regular Bibi Andersson!
The setting is a future time during a new ice age or years after a cataclysm or maybe it's in Seberia! Newman plays Essex, a former seal hunter with a pregnant wife (French actress Brigette Fossy) who after years of wandering visits his brother. Places are divided into "sectors" and everyone plays a dice game called "Quintet". After the wife and bro are killed in an explosion, Essex takes on a new identity and goes to a sector where Fernando Rey as Grigor presides over the local game. Andersson is Grigor's wife Ambrosia and Vittorio Gassman is St. Christopher. David Langton (from UPSTAIRS,DOWNSTAIRS) is the paranoid Goldstar. Everybody talks a lot and a couple of characters die. The game Quintet may be more than just a game...
I think...This was also a weird time for Paul Newman. The next year he would make the Irwin Allen produced disaster (in more ways than one) film WHEN TIME RAN OUT and after that FORT APACHE:THE BRONX. His previous film had been SLAP SHOT in 1977.
I wonder if there was a Quintet board game promotion tied to the film?
"This all gonna make sense when you edit it, right Bob?"Thanks for reading!
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