LGM Film Club, Part 519: California Split

I personally loathe gambling for a lot of reasons, but probably my very favorite Robert Altman film is California Split, his 1974 buddy comedy with George Segal and Elliott Gould. They are both utterly degenerate gamblers and the film does a great job of getting into what that might be like, both in terms of the joys and the nothingness at the heart of it (how the movie ends). But no one is watching this for a lesson on gambling one way or another. It’s the great dialogue, the fantastic chemistry between Gould and Segal, the superb atmosphere created throughout, the other gamblers, the characters in the casinos, the prostitutes who Gould lives with (or crashes with), the general early 70s slight underbelly of society. Gould and Altman had such a wonderful connection anyway. Altman never had another actor so fit for his style and Gould never found another director who could use him so well (really, most of Gould’s great films are with Altman and he might well be mostly forgotten today without these films). Not all of Altman’s films are great, not by any means. His way of making film almost inherently was going to lead to inconsistent results. But he was on such a fantastic winning streak in the 70s, no wonder he made a film about winning big in gambling like California Split. Altman evidently was also a pretty heavy gambler himself.

What is below is not really a trailer, but a short film about the making of the film, which is pretty interesting if low budget.