I just saw “3 Women,” the Robert Altman movie I’ve been wanting to see since I was 16. It was extraordinary, like some kind of a Rosetta stone that sheds light on so many movies that came later. Didn’t it come out the same year as “Eraserhead” and “That Obscure Object Of Desire,” 1977? How could this film get produced and distributed by a major studio were it made today? I suppose that it baffled almost everyone who saw it when it came out. Copyright issues must have kept it out of sight until now; the Film Center must have jumped through some real hoops to get a print.

Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacek were just right on the money. Their characters are like ones that would on the periphery of a more conventional film. But here, they’re right in the middle. I’ve never seen an Altman film like this one. I couldn’t take my eyes away. The story is that he woke up from a dream and wrote it down and that formed the basis of the script. Like Lynch and Bunuel Altman yields to dream-logic: psychologically sound but logically irrational at the same time. Everything fits together and yet it doesn’t make “sense.”

Now I hafta spend some time surfing online so I can read more about this. I hope this film will be put on video soon. Along with “Diary of a Mad Housewife” it’s the most neglected 70’s film I can think of.