User Reviews

Quintet marks the only venture of both Paul Newman and director Robert Altman into the realm of science fiction. It was said of Newman that he could not do comedy, but he tried until he finally scored a real success in that genre with Slap Shot. But the failure of this film left him gun shy and he never tried it again.

This is one of the biggest downer films I've ever seen. It's a futuristic ice age, brought on by who knows what, but presumably it's a nuclear winter. Even during the ice age of thousands of years ago, the equatorial parts of the earth still sustained animal and human life, but apparently not here. Seals have survived and Paul Newman is a seal hunter on the outside.

But hunters do need a little R&R and Newman goes to a futuristic city where things are so boring the natives have some kind of game played with six people and it's a kind of Russian roulette. To win you have to kill five other participants in your game.

It's a sad turn to see what man has come down to. Which is one of the reasons I just could not get into this story. The atmosphere is bleak, the story is bleak, the people are bleak, it's all so bleak. No wonder this thing came up short at the box office.

It's a film that just about everyone thinks is never going to be on the top ten list of Paul Newman films, including me.

This is man's future, what a bummer.

Damned as it was by most critics and a resounding flop commercially, this opus of Robert Altman has long since been consigned to cinematic oblivion. Granted, it is bleak and somewhat obscure with a tempo that is far too lento but is also visually stunning, atmospheric and very well acted.

The box office draw here is obviously Paul Newman but it is highly unlikely that his legion of fans would relish seeing him in this rather glum, downbeat role. However there is ample compensation in the imported talents of Bibi Andersson, Brigitte Fossey, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey and Nina van Pallandt all of whom bring undeniable class to the proceedings.

Jean Bofferty, the favoured cinematographer of Claude Sautet, has captured extraordinary images of a post-apocalyptic ice-age and there is a score by Tom Pierson, his only one for a feature I believe, that is nigh on symphonic.

The problem with the film is the dismal reputation that precedes it which must surely colour our perception. Altman's career consists of highs and lows and although this could by no stretch of the imagination be termed a 'high', it is not nearly as bad as some would have us believe.

After tracking down this video and reading predominantly negative reviews, this perplexing, yet interesting and forgotten Altman film has something going on, I'm just not sure if it was accidentally interesting or intended. In a room without an air conditioner, in the beginning of August in New York City, this film actually made me feel cold. It was amazing how well the mood is set by ice in every scene. The acting by Newman is stiff, which may have been intentional in order to portray the concept of the frozen atmosphere? Who knows, I would love to extend Altman that credit.

The vaseline on the lens of the camera was a horrible mistake, the intended goal was missed, all it accomplished was making the viewer feel as if the film were out of focus, what an idiotic mistake that was by Altman! To give Altman some credit, this film is bold, perplexing and worth a look. It may be perplexing for the sole reason that the lines are difficult to hear on a fifteen year old VHS copy of an ex-rental. Far superior to "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" which ironically was the other film Newman starred in which Altman directed, and his previous film to "Quintet" in addition to being one of the other misses by Altman in the seventies, when the man was creatively on fire. Newman and Altman did not connect on a good film, which is perplexing in and of itself. As a whole, worth a look for serious Altman fans, but not recommended for those who are not into sci-fi, incomplete ideas, or blurred vision. A must see if you are sweating in an apartment with out air conditioning.

I had never heard of this movie until I saw it in an "obscure sci-fi" list. That was surprising, because it sounded like it was right in my wheel house. I love 70s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I love Paul Newman, and I love Robert Altman movies.

For the record, I loved Zardoz, which is generally regarded as another high-concept misfire, so I had hopes I would like this one in spite of the suspiciously low Rotten Tomatoes score.

Unfortunately, RT was right. This was just boring and terrible. Basically, an ice age has enveloped the Earth and everyone passes their time playing a game called Quintet - and people get killed over it. That's it; that's the plot.

The whole thing had the feel of a pilot for a TV show that was never picked up. You know, like maybe in the next episode, something interesting would happen. There definitely wasn't enough there to stand on its own.

On top of everything else, it takes itself really seriously, so it even fails in the "so bad it's good" category".

I can't recommend watching this movie for any reason whatsoever.

Altman's Quintet has to be considered more than just flawed: As so many other reviewers have pointed out, the ideas behind the film, even some of the choices in depicting those ideas, ought to work--and yet very little in this difficult film does. The partially fogged camera lens--I remarked to my wife that it has to be the most distracting directorial conceit I've ever seen--never allowed me to get "into" the film's world.

In general there are serious problems with the mise-en-scene employed here. It's clear that no small amount of thought went into factors like costume and production design, but neither is very effective in evoking a believable world. Perhaps it is a matter of scale; the film is so stage-bound that I laughed out loud once it was mentioned that "five million" people lived in the city. (Yes I understand the constraints of the film's budget. Matte paintings here and there might have helped.) In all the most disappointing Altman film I've ever seen. Great ideas and grand metaphors do not always come through in art--it's just part of the game.

Sorry--whatever merits the story about the game may have, this movie really loses it with the details. This post-apocalyptic city seems to have plenty of light bulbs and electricity (where from who knows where), but apparently no one bothered to save an electric heater. I am sorry, but if you have electricity, why do you have to rely solely on fire for warmth? Also, some characters seem to have vaguely Italian accents while the rest are deadpan American.

And the dogs--jeez! Why aren't the people eating them (instead of the reverse)? And apparently only one breed survived. The dogs are a distraction and rather stupid. The movie could have worked on the level of the game, but the stupid "realistic" details were just the reverse and made the movie false and unwatchable.

This is one of the many very good performances by Paul Newman, who was always underrated as an actor because of his all-encompassing beauty. The main problem with this movie, in my opinion, is the huge Vaseline budget they had. The whole movie was shot with Vaseline at the edges of the lens. I find that very annoying. When I make the effort to remember not to be annoyed by that "Vaseline experiment", I find it is not a bad movie by a long shot. The cast is brilliant, the futuristic plot is innovative for the period and the decor is intriguingly apt. The smearing of Vaseline on the lens applied to a whole movie may have been innovative, it was certainly daring, but I, for one, like to be able to look at the part of the screen I choose, and not be forbidden to have a clear look at the edges. CH

...now I wish it had remained that way.

Warning: If you stumble upon this movie while surfing TV, keep surfing!

This isn't even a good one-time watch. It's the most boring, senseless piece of trash I've ever watched. I can't believe someone pitched this script, much less made the movie. I can't believe Paul Newman signed on to play in this movie.

This is a bad, bad, bad movie.

I don't know why i had never heard of this movie before with Paul Newman and directed by Robert Altman. This movie doesn't even seem to have a cult following and this must of been a big flop when it came out to be this unknown. A lot of the other people writing comments on this movie seem to really hate it but i actually liked it. I liked the fact that it didn't give any answers about what happened to the earth or even what year it is. The first hour of the movie is very slowing and you really don't know what's going on. I would like to know what Newman and Altman would have to say about this movie now and i guess i can see why so many people hated it even though i liked it.

During a future ice age, dying humanity occupies its remaining time by playing a board game called "Quintet." For one small group, this obsession is not enough; they play the game with living pieces ... and only the winner survives.

That isn't my synopsis of Quintet , that is an anonymous explanation of this film I found online and whoever wrote it deserved credit for making a terrible film sound exciting and let me tell you , this is more than terrible .

I have no idea what Paul Newman was thinking when he agreed to star in this film . I know he made a movie with Robert Altman a few years earlier and I can only image he was doing a friend a favour because he couldn't have read the script .

In my pursuit to watch every Paul Newman film , not all have been classics . Some have been very average but at least they have had the great man at the helm to make them watchable. Even Paul Newman couldn't make this film watchable.

Quintet is two hours of waffle about a game that the viewer could never understand and has some of the worst dialogue I've heard in long time .

The set looks terrible. Maybe they found it in a cupboard from the set of Dr Who from the 60's ? They also smeared the edges of the camera lenses with Vaseline to make it look colder . I just wish they had smeared the entire lense so we didn't have to see this horrible mess of a movie .

I saw the film in Westwood, and I don't recall having anyone walk out of the theater. The film is decidedly depressing. It was written at a time when a lot of people in the country were very concerned that America and the Soviet Union were heading towards nuclear war. The catch word at that time was "nuclear winter". Scientists in the late 1970's had just announced to the world that a nuclear war was totally unwinnable---because if just 10% of the nuclear weapons on Earth were detonated anywhere on the planet, so much dust and debris would be thrown into the upper atmosphere that the sun's rays would be blocked, causing another ice age. This film is set in such an ice age. The main theme of the movie is that nothing is more important than love and caring about people, and your family, and children. In the film, we see a world where people have stopped loving others, and where the people have adopted a death culture. The film was not very entertaining, but it was a warning of where our culture could be heading if we weren't careful. The movie certainly made me think. It was a turning point in my life, and made me realize I had a duty to care about other people.

I really wanted to like this movie--I like Altman, I like Newman. I like science fiction and I liked the idea. And since this movie seems to be universally hated, I wanted to swim against the tide and find the intellectual quality in the movie that others seemed to be missing. All that going for it, and I still hated it.

Incomprehensible drivel.

And what's with the vaseline all over the camera lens? Folks who like this movie are fooling themselves, just because you dont understand a movie doesn't mean that it's deep, it means that the director and writer didn't know what they were doing.

Excellent Sci-Fi from an unlikely source- Robert Altman. The world is dying. Glaciers are descending so quickly that a city "in the South" that still functioned until recently, is almost no longer working. People swaddled in thick layers of clothing are huddled in the remains of an ice-bound city, no longer able to reproduce, with no future. Waiting for death, they spend their time playing a dangerous gambling game. From out of the snow an adventurer arrives (Paul Newman) with his pregnant young spouse.

The snowed-in city is brilliantly created on the site of Montreal's World Fairgrounds (Expo 1967). Dim electric lightbulbs thaw small hollows of ice in frigid snow-drifted rooms. One thinks of Doris Lessing's world dying of cold in "The Making of the Representative for Planet 8". A keen portrayal of a race without hope, barely clinging to any shreds of humanity.

Watching QUINTET is not unlike watching a group of people playing a word game in Portuguese, or some other language you do not understand. You get the idea that they are playing a game, and if you watch closely enough, you may just begin to understand the rules. But, why bother, since it is clear you can't join in and you wouldn't want to if you had the chance.

Director Robert Altman is not one to beg an audience to like his films, let alone understand them. Sometimes he lets you slip into the picture to be a part of the crowd, like in M*A*S*H, NASHVILLE and A WEDDING, films so full of hubbub and orchestrated chaos, one or two more bodies in the scene wouldn't make much of a difference. And other times, he seems to resent the fact that someone might even be watching his film; as in IMAGES or THREE WOMEN, where the stories are almost personal monologues made for an audience of one, Altman. With QUINTET, Altman seems to purposely dare anyone to become involved with the narrative.

You can't depend on Altman to do the logical or the expected, which is sometimes the thing that makes his films so remarkably iconoclastic. But sometimes doing the unexpected isn't daring, just dumb. For instance, in QUINTET, we are introduced to a young woman who is apparently the last person on earth capable of getting pregnant, and she is, indeed, with child. This last ray of hope in a decaying society is almost immediately extinguished; Altman doesn't even wait until the end to play his last depressing card in this elaborate nihilistic and pessimistic tale. He lets us know how empty and meaningless life is right off the bat. Brave? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely. Devoid of a purpose, he tries to build a story on a rapidly melting iceberg, all the while reminding us how pointless the effort is.

For the record, QUINTET, can at least claim to be prophetic. The story is centered on a treacherous game played by the various bored characters. It is a form of TAG (the assassination game): a handful of people target each other for elimination, each as a would-be assassin and each as a would-be victim. Two or more can form alliances to kill a third. As they die off, new targets are assigned. Whoever lives, wins. All of this happens at some exotic, inhospitable wasteland. It is, to a great extent, an extreme, sci-fi version of "Survivor" -- minus the commercial plugs and faked "reality."

It is not a bad concept for a sci-fi epic. A post-apocalyptic setting, a microcosm of the world (the cast is pointedly multinational), a game where no on can be trusted or least not for long, and where no one really wins. Literally a cold war. A steely eyed director with a taste for dark humor and violent invention could have a field day. The mystery in QUINTET is not in the game or how it is played, but in why it exists it all. If the game "Quintet" is a metaphor for life, then Altman, seems to see nothing in the material but a chance to show life to be an empty, meaningless game -- a conclusion as obvious as it is untrue. Given the lively, albeit cynical nature of the rest of his diverse films, I don't believe that Altman believes in QUINTET either. And if Altman has no faith in his material, why should we?

The earlier review is pretty much on target, which Altman was NOT with this film. I haven't seen it since its original release but I have seldom spent two hours in a theater feeling as miserable and disappointed as I was with this film. If some pretentious community theater attempted a sci-fi version of a Ingmar Bergman film, it might come off like this. I can't bring myself to give anything Altman has made a "1" but this is probably the nadir of a career that has had some remarkable highs and lows. I would have walked out, but as a paid film critic I couldn't. (Think about that the next time you envy movie critics.)

The best thing I can say about "Quintet" is that it's not quite as bad as I remembered it being on my first viewing.

But that doesn't mean it's good.

This weird, sci-fi thriller is not quite like any other movie I've ever seen, which I guess at least gives it the stamp of novelty. But it's a borderline disaster of a movie, and one of the worst Robert Altman ever made. On the DVD special feature about the making of "Quintet," it's clear that even Altman didn't know what the hell the movie was supposed to be.

It's set in some distant future when the world is in the grip of another ice age. The film was shot at the abandoned site of the Montreal Expo '67, and I do have to admit that this gives the movie some interesting production design elements, even if much of it looks like it's being filmed in an iced-over shopping mall. Paul Newman, looking zonked out and absolutely disinterested in anything going on around him, and Brigitte Fossey, play drifters who wander into this futuristic city looking for Newman's brother. Soon Newman is caught up in a deadly game of "Quintet," which all of the bored inhabitants play for lack of anything better to do, and the rules of which are never made clear to the audience. All we know is that the object of the game it to kill everyone else you're playing with and remain the only person alive. This gives these nihilistic inhabitants their only thrill, because as one of them says at one point in a psychobabblish soliloquy, only by being near to death can one appreciate being alive.

The movie is slow, ugly and actually uncomfortable to watch due to its unrelenting gloominess. It's almost as if Altman was purposely setting out to make a movie no one would want to sit through. There aren't characters -- oh sure, actors walk around speaking lines, but none of the lines really means much and the impressive list of international actors Altman assembled for this register not a whit. Only Bibi Andersson gives the closest thing to a memorable performance as could possibly be found in a movie like this. But nevertheless, it does succeed in establishing an atmosphere, even if that atmosphere is one of pure awfulness, and it is oddly fascinating in the way that watching a man slowly starve himself to death would be fascinating.

Altman really hit a dry spell after nearly a decade of superb films. "Quintet" followed close on the heels of the atrocious "A Wedding" and was followed in short order by the not bad but mostly forgettable "A Perfect Couple," the by-all-accounts terrible "Health" (which I've never seen because it's not available anywhere TO see) and the disastrous "Popeye." Thank God he rebounded.

Grade: D-

...it was that bad.

I thought that maybe I had suffered a stroke during this movie because I couldn't concentrate very well and I seemed to be drooling more than normal. It was SSSSOOOOO slow and SSSOOOOO quiet that we both fought like wild dogs to stay awake. At one point, I almost bit my tongue off in order to stay awake for this piece of shite. Unless, of course, I was having a seizure-- which wouldn't surprise me in the least.

If there is a hell, then the movie theater in hell shows this film and only this film. (Ok, OK...maybe it sometimes double features with "Shirley Valentine.")

I'd gladly take Ed Wood, Jr's masterpieces over this guano ANY day. Seriously... I'm crapping you negative.

Did Altman have a painkiller habit while he was making this film? I'm just curious. But more than that, I'm dying to find out if he was thinking at all and, if so, what exactly could that have been??!!!! Doing his laundry maybe?

OUCH!!!

I saw Quintet on a Sunday afternoon in Northbrook, IL in the winter of 1978-1979. There was so much snow plowed badly in the parking lot that I had a hard time finding a space. When I got to the theater there was a strange little notice hand printed on a 3x5 file card that there would be no refunds to Quintet once you had entered the theater. I asked the ticket seller why and he said that so many people had left during the previous night's performance that they almost had a riot.

I knew I was in for something special. As the movie began I noticed that there were credits for the original screenplay and then for the final screenplay. Dissension in the ranks. There was inadequate explanation of where Paul Newman and Bibi Anderson came from and why they were going to the city. Indeed, the idea of hosing down Expo '67 in the winter and allowing the icicles to freeze gave it an other-worldly appearance. (I think that could have been Altman's attraction to the project.) Living in the Midwest during the winter of '78-'79 made me very sensitive to freezing weather. I moved to California the next fall.

There are two last items to consider: the dogs and the fish. The city was home to dozens if not hundreds of dogs. They scavenged for meat (often human bodies.) The malaise affecting the human population disabled them from disposing of the human dead. And finally the fish. There are several shots showing fish being harvested and processed at the beginning of the film, showing that there was an adequate food source for the people who lived in the city.

And finally a mention of the Game: there was a feeling of depression to the movie and the inhabitants of the city. When cut off from a natural human life that includes the having and raising of children, one can get depressed. An aberrant lifestyle that made a game out of killing others might result.

Let me begin by saying i am an Altman aficionado. I first saw the film in theaters, upon its release, at age 20. Already a movie buff, i was unimpressed. I viewed the film twice more upon its video release, and still didn't get it. Last week it was on Fox Movie Channel, I watched it again, enhancing my viewing by checking out others online comments and clues. I have now come to appreciate the film, and have ordered the VHS online. I am looking forward to more repeated viewings as it improves each time. Altman is an acquired taste but for the true film buff the rewards are there. I have had a similar experience with other Altman films such as The Long Goodbye and California Split.

Robert Altman's "Quintet" is a dreary, gloomy, hard to follow thriller where you finally give up after awhile because it's so complicated.

I remember seeing this at my local twin on opening weekend with a full house. By the time the picture ended it was less than a quarter full. Never have I witnessed such a mass exodus without there being an emergency to drive people out. That should tell you how bad it is. I believe it to be the worst film ever made involving such major talent in front of and behind the camera.

I saw this picture twice (apart from the fact that I like it) because there were many questions I needed to be answered. The first one is about its time-space ubication... Does anybody know in which year or location it is supposed to be placed the whole story? The only data I could get was that it's told in a post-apocalyptic glacial era. Thanks to awarded famous director, Robert Altman, the full movie is blessed by veil of mystery, in which the previous fact is included, that makes it an interesting movie to follow minute by minute, trying to understand the strange situation. It's not as bad as the public opinion said. It's not an excellent movie as 1970's MASH (from the same director). It's just a good sci-fi movie of people trying to pass the time playing a strange game, just because they have no more hope in living for the next day. However, I'd like that Altman had included more details about the story instead of leaving it to our pooooor imagination. Oh! I was just forgetting my second question: Anybody understood how to play Quintet?

Unreal that a film could rival Paranormal Activity for inducing yawns, but Quintet pulls out the stops. It's not only as boring as PA, but it tries to make points that are so vague they are meaningless to anyone able to stay awake through the entire film looking for some substance.

Problems:

First, that annoying filter! REALLY, this blur filter, as if the entire film is a dream sequence.

Next, the music. It seems so out of place trying to make you think something is happening, while nothing is. Almost like the conductor had the band playing for another movie.

Plot! Where was this thing going?

I'm sure there might be fans of Altman or Newman who might like this just because, but if you're neither, this is a brutal and boring experience. Excruciating for someone hoping to see interesting sci-fi and a glimpse of someone's idea of the future.

I saw the film for the first time about a month ago on cable. Always heard about it, but never had a chance to check it out.In sharp contrast with most of the reviews on this page I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. While not a big budget film, production team created an interesting world of constant snow. Altman must also be given credit for successfully creating an atmosphere of constant dread. That combined with a powerful music and loud ambient sound effects, presents a cinematic work with imagery that will haunt you weeks after seeing the film.It's not a perfect film, but what film is? Sure, movie takes it's time....,but so what? Sure not everything is explained, but where does it say that story must be spoon fed to the audience? How about letting me think on my own? Sure, it's a low tech Sci/Fi, but so what? Just because there's no plasma rifles or space battles doesn't mean the film is bad...Altman's film is an unusual take on Science Fiction genre...More of a play than a film...more of an allegory than a linear storytelling...and it's just keeps getting better with repeated viewings. More things noticed that were missed before...A surprisingly rich film. In it's tone, the movie I would compare"Quintet" to would be Tarkovsky's "Solaris".... I loved "Quintet"! Too bad it's not on DVD!

If you're a science fiction fan and you think you're in possession of every sci-fi movie out there that matters - but you haven't seen or don't own Quintet - you have a gaping hole to deal with, for Quintet is essential viewing. It's not perfect, it's maddening at times, but as a wholly unique take on the future (and unspecified future events) it's required viewing, believe it.

Quintet is, first off, an American director's (conscious or unconscious, I'm not sure) European-movie excursion - or, it's more akin to, say, a French director's style than an American's. Very long shots of pinpoint-sized characters as they move slow as molasses into full view; utterly spare dialogue; women from a Bergman film; relentless singularity of vision; and nothing given away, no easy answers, fields of question marks all around. A slight movie, in a way...the barest bit of celluloid, with a relative few actors and a rather oblique plot. But the movie sears itself into your brain, and even though you'll never need to see it again after the first viewing (if you're like me), you're not gonna forget it.

It should also be mentioned that one of the great feats of Quintet is featuring the very environment itself as an actorly presence, something to be reckoned with - or, more precisely, cold itself as an actorly presence. This movie, next to Fargo, renders the latter a Hawaiian romp, when it comes to the depiction of bone-shivering cold. You cannot watch this movie, even in Arizona, and resist quaking along with the actors. Probably the most believable movie re: pure environmental cold I've ever seen. Which of course matches the goings-on of the story...but you'll have to find that out for yourself.

See Quintet, and witness a great director's creative restlessness touching the sci-fi genre in a completely original way. It's like nothing you've ever seen. And it will, in your depths, despite yourself, trouble you.

Robert Altman's "Quintet" involves and comprises many things. A mystery without suspense. A thriller without visceral response. A cinematographer with glaucoma. A pokerfaced block of wood known as Paul Newman. An audience without emotional attachment. A work of hate. A derivative monstrosity. An unsalvageable mistake.

Do not believe "Quintet"'s supporters. Those who "like" the film have executed the amazing feat of effectively lying to themselves. This is not an intelligent art film. It is not complex or thought-provoking (unless you count, "How did this get made?"). It does not effectively create a "mood" (unless you appreciate utter, insufferable boredom). It is not a "cool" head movie. It is not Lynchian (that is an insult to David Lynch). It is not "deep" or "brave" or any other such nonsense. The distorted lenswork is not revolutionary or fascinating or even justified. Everything about this film is embarrassing and amateurish. This tragedy could have been prevented in the earliest stages of preproduction, with the realization that there was no script.

Altman is a valuable director. He can be utterly brilliant. But he is human. Humans make terrible mistakes. Like "Quintet." Don't make the mistake of watching it (or, if nothing else, paying to watch it).