Elaborate Chaos
Chapter 3 demonstrates that standard accounts mischaracterize Altman’s use of overlapping dialogue, his signature sound technique, and presents a history of formal elaboration intertwined with technological innovation. Critics have underestimated the multidimensionality and capaciousness of Altman’s practice, treating pragmatically executed innovation as a counterideology. The analysis offered here demonstrates that Altman’s sound design is both highly manipulated and highly conscious of narrative aims. Altman and his collaborators innovated solutions allowing them to simultaneously convey the impression of naturalism, provide a vehicle for overt narrational commentary, and ensure the intelligibility of essential narrative premises. Tracking Altman’s early 1970s trajectory demonstrates the consistently multifaceted nature of his aims, even with the move to 24-track recording technology on Nashville. Instead of ideologically virtuous audience-liberating chaos, what we actually find is functionally virtuosic orchestration that represents not a rejection of Hollywood but its vitalization.