Robert Altman, the cinema’s Walt Whitman of failure and self-deception, lands in the ultimate metaphor for success in America—and the result is a technical masterpiece (1975) replete with self-consciously allegorical overtones rising to a politically simpleminded din. A rare and puzzling movie: beautiful and cruel, passionate but strangely shallow. With Henry Gibson, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin, and Keith Carradine.