IMAGES

Susanna York’s performance in Images earned her the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.  It was a well-deserved honor.

My 2025 dive into viewing all of Robert Altman’s films has most recently led me to Images, released in 1972.  The primary character is a children’s book author named Cathryn, played by Susannah York.  Before seeing Images, my only exposure to Susannah’s work was her brief and unremarkable role as Lara, Superman’s Kryptonian mother in the 1978 movie Superman.  Since viewing Images, I can’t wait to explore more of her work!  She was mesmerizing and utterly captivating as Cathryn, spinning her emotions in a moment’s notice.  She would deftly transform from frail victim to conniving manipulator with nothing more than an adjustment to her lips and the slight manipulation of an eyebrow.  Her face could pivot from confusion to astute awareness with but a tweak of facial composure.   These well-crafted emotional flips were required throughout the film because Cathryn is schizophrenic.  This is never stated, and it takes a while to catch on, but once you do, you realize that you spend the film seeing her life play out through her eyes and her delusions.  Which parts are real and which parts are hallucinations, you often don’t know.  And this is what makes the film immensely intriguing.  And, of course, leaving interpretation of things up to the audience is an Altman storytelling technique that I have come to relish!  I give huge accolades to York’s performance because despite how often as a viewer you don’t know what the hell is going on, it is evident throughout the movie that at all times… Susannah York knows exactly what is going on with Cathryn at all times… even if Cathryn herself doesn’t!  This is a tour de force performance.

Many references to this film refer to it as Altman’s only horror movie, but I didn’t find it to be a horror flick at all.  For me it was much more a psychological thriller.  The cinematography is breathtaking, with the filming and the story taking place in Ireland.  True to its title, the movie is jammed full of images that all seem to be sewn together to try and make a full tapestry of a story.  Oh, and there are chimes everywhere.  If they had any significance to Cathryn’s mental state of being I didn’t find the connection, but they did lend themselves to the unease and tension of the captivating score provided by John Williams (he of Star Wars and Jurassic Park fame!).  This score screams 1970s, and it is perfect underneath this bizarro story.

Cathryn is married to Hugh (Rene Auberjonois), but she often mistakes Hugh for being Marcel or Rene, two men from her past.  Her connection with both men is best left to unfold so no spoilers here.  The film spends the first half letting the viewer in on the fact that there is something amiss but forcing you to figure it out on your own.  The second half of the story is really about the crescendo of Cathryn’s need to gain some sort of control as she recognizes that her hold on reality is becoming more and more fractured. 

The movie isn’t perfect, and being an early film to deal with schizophrenia, it doesn’t spend a single moment trying to explain it, justify it, or even address it.  All we do is experience it.  This can make the viewing adventure seem a bit confusing or dismissive, but I don’t think that was Altman’s intent at all.  Like many Altman films, symbolism abounds.  One of the background items in this film is a puzzle that the characters take time to work on.  The puzzle is a metaphor for Cathryn’s mind.  She complains because there are pieces missing (much like with her psyche), and that fitting it all together is often too difficult. 

And the ending?  Well… I loved it!  There is a still shot before the closing prologue, that was a magnificent and shocking surprise.  Maybe things could have ended differently if some sort of therapy had been available to Cathryn.  But this was the 1970s and studies into variant mental disorders were still in their infancy.  But to be clear, this movie was never intended to be educational; it was intended to be thrilling, confusing, and even a little scary.  To that end, it succeeds handsomely.