Man Is Not a Bird, Dusan Makavejev posits. Oh but he is, Robert Altman retorts. The goal is to "isolate the dream," the method is Ionesco -- out of it all comes one of the most acerbic views of American life in 1970. The modernist unruliness is announced by Margaret Hamilton, who ushers in the credits with an off-key "Star-Spangled Banner" and exits with a zoom onto her ruby slippers and a few bars of "Over the Rainbow" played over her corpse. Brewster McCloud (Bud Cort) is a soft geek in glasses and striped shirts, the baby bird nestled in the Houston Astrodome; his dream is to take flight with a Wright Brothers thingamabob, his guardian is a fallen angel (Sally Kellerman) whose trenchcoat cloaks scars on her shoulder blades. Assholes like Stacy Keach's gnarled Mr. Potter and Bert Remsen's loudmouth bigot turn up strangled around Brewster, a San Francisco "supercop" (Michael Murphy, decked out in pseudo-McQueen cool and a wide collection of turtlenecks) is summoned to the investigation and ponders the connection between the wave of murders and bird shit. Emboldened by the commercial success of M*A*S*H*, Altman trades conventional narrative for inspired non-sequitur, with the wise-guy whimsy sustained and enlarged by a dark undercurrent of despair. Sex is the human way of flying, Mama Bird tells Brewster, but his fall comes after he's de-virginized by Shelley Duvall, a breezy dip out of Rivette -- "The blue-footed boobie competes for the attention of her intended by thrusting out her chest," the avian Lecturer (Rene Auberjonois) informs the camera before letting out a stretched squawk. The details are to be savored: Jennifer Salt driven to onanism by the protagonist's sweaty chin-ups, John Schuck burying his face in a Captain America comic book, the mock-Peckinpah editing in the midst of the mock-car chase. A fairy tale from an auteur aware of how close soaring and crashing can be: Altman's concluding carnival reveals the debt to Fellini, his punchline contemplates a Peter Pan squashed, "cradle and all." With William Windom, Corey Fischer, and G. Wood.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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