HIS MOVIES CHANGED LIVES INNOVATIVE AUTEUR WILL LEAVE LASTING IMPACT.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS Film Critic

Robert Altman, who died Monday at the age of 81, was the great Hollywood maverick, a true innovator, a multiple comeback kid and a master director of ensembles whom actors adored.

That's what you'll be hearing everywhere, and it's true. But to me, Altman's most amazing talent was the incredible ability to change a viewer's life. I know that because, more than any other filmmaker, he did mine.

The unbelievable run of films he directed in the first half of the 1970s broke barrier after barrier and proved that the possibilities of what could be done with commercial cinema were boundless.

``M*A*S*H,'' though set during the Korean conflict, was the first great anti-war comedy of the Vietnam era (and remains the most ruthlessly funny). ``McCabe and Mrs. Miller'' and ``The Long Goodbye'' pulled the rug out from under, respectively, Western and hard-boiled detective genre conventions while showing us how those kinds of films emphasized notions of American masculinity and capitalism that were only a part of (when true at all) a much larger reality.

Similarly, ``Brewster McCloud,'' ``Thieves Like Us'' and ``California Split'' questioned cherished cultural notions such as individualism, escape fantasy, outlaw romance and hitting the big score.

His movies got at things about people and society that had been buried under decades of showbiz lies. And most of them did it with a cynical humor, improvisational immediacy, new overlapping dialogue techniques and restless, focus-challenged camerawork that were perfectly suited for those contentious, cacophonous years.

All of which was mightily impressive to a young man attending film school. Here was a director combining singular artistry with the pulse of the culture, and of course that was what many of us studying cinema at that juncture wanted to see most.

In the year I graduated, 1975, it felt like Altman presented me with the best possible gift: his masterpiece, ``Nashville.'' I'd never seen such an audacious (24 characters! All-original country songs!), perceptive examination of the American soul in all its colors and contradictions -- and, frankly, I haven't since. The thing even seemed to predict the shape and outcome of the next year's election with eerie insightfulness.

I saw ``Nashville'' over and over again. I dragged friends to it, some of whom it bored and confused. I hardly remember them at all, but I still know every character in the movie by heart. I suppose I decided to become a critic because of ``Nashville'' to a great degree.

If this was how powerful films could be, well, I wanted to follow all of the next, surely awe-inspiring stages of development.

Of course, ``Jaws'' became a box-office sensation that same year while ``Nashville'' didn't do much business. Two years later, ``Star Wars'' came out, and that was that.

But the damage had been done. Altman had instilled a belief in cinema as a vital, relevant, fully engaging art form that I couldn't get out of my system. This has not made my life, or even my profession in the increasingly mindless landscape of pop culture, easy. But it's also enriched and defined what I do in ways beyond measure.

And even as things went bad for movies and for him, Altman kept teaching worthwhile lessons.

After ``Nashville,'' he fell into a period of pretentiousness and indulgence (``Quintet,'' ``A Perfect Couple,'' ``Health'' -- the last of which I managed to snag a bit part in, but even so remains his worst movie). Suddenly blockbuster-conscious studios didn't want to have anything to with him, and he bitterly and extensively complained about all those idiot Philistines until, as far as I know, his dying day.

But Altman never gave up and kept trying new things to keep working. His free-form camera and sound design brought a rare sense of life to a series of filmed plays (``Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean''; ``Streamers''; ``Secret Honor''; ``Fool for Love''); his hatred of the Hollywood system fueled his early 1990s comeback piece ``The Player''; his ode to his hometown's jazz heritage, ``Kansas City,'' went ``Nashville'' one better at integrating music into movies; and even after that big ensemble specialty of his appeared to have fallen into hopeless decadence (``Ready to Wear,'' ``Dr. T and the Women''), Altman ended his career with three very different examples of the form -- ``Gosford Park,'' ``The Company'' and ``A Prairie Home Companion'' -- all of which radiate an old master's deceptive ease with challengingly complex productions.

And much like ``Nashville,'' his final film proved prophetic. It was Altman's idea to drench ``Prairie Home'' in a sense of mortality.

``Bob kept saying, `I thought people would get it, that death is the point of the whole thing,''' one of that film's stars, Virginia Madsen, told the Daily News earlier this year. ``And I said, `Yeah, but it's your fault. You made the movie too fun to watch.'''

Relentlessly as he complained about it, I think Altman liked playing the part of misunderstood artist. The half-dozen or so times I interviewed him were marked by contentious responses to most of my positive assertions as well as all the critical ones. He appreciated praise but usually assumed that no one else understood the whole picture of what he was trying to do. And he defended his worst movies as fiercely as his best ones, which was charming in its curmudgeonly way and no doubt sprang from the same, nobody-gets-me line of reasoning.

Of course, Altman had evidence to back up that self-regarding opinion. Somewhere up around spot number one or two on my 3,879 reasons not to take the Academy Awards seriously list is Altman hasn't won a directing Oscar. The establishment bastards proved they were out to get him last March when they gave him their death-warrant equivalent, a lifetime achievement award -- which he uncharacteristically accepted with gracious warmth, while announcing to the world that he'd been living on borrowed time with a transplanted heart for 10 years.

The last time I saw Altman was in early October, at the start of a little event for ``Prairie Home's'' DVD release in Beverly Hills. I didn't bother to introduce myself for the seventh or eighth time; he was surrounded by chattering sycophants, and he looked weary and frail as he sat on a bench, his back slouching against a wall. We had already discussed everything I cared about over the years, and I figured I'd give others their chance that night.

When I heard of Altman's passing Tuesday, I suppose the expected reaction should have been something like, ``Damn, I wish I had told him, that one last time, how much his movies had meant to me.'' But I didn't feel that way at all; if I've learned anything from Altman's work and his gruff no-nonsense personality, it's that he had no use for conventional sentimentality. It blocks the path to understanding the full, honest picture of our emotions and of the way the world actually is. In his best films, Altman illuminated that reality better than anyone who ever cried ``Action!''

And the pragmatic truth about Altman's death, it seems to me, is, if you gotta go, leave the best legacy that you can. He did, and while the faith in cinema's potential that work implanted in me might not have panned out, I firmly believe this: eventually, everyone will get Robert Altman's work.

Because the truth will out that way.

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ALTMAN FILMS

Films of Robert Altman as director, producer or writer include:

``Christmas Eve,'' 1947

``Bodyguard,'' 1948

``The Delinquents,'' 1957

``The James Dean Story,'' 1957

``Nightmare in Chicago,'' 1964

``Countdown,'' 1968

``That Cold Day in the Park,'' 1969

``M*A*S*H,'' 1970

``Brewster McCloud,'' 1970

``Events,'' 1970

``McCabe and Mrs. Miller,'' 1971

``Images,'' 1972

``The Long Goodbye,'' 1973

``Thieves Like Us,'' 1974

``California Split,'' 1974

``Nashville,'' 1975

``Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson,'' 1976

``Welcome to L.A.,'' 1977

``The Late Show,'' 1977

``Three Women,'' 1977

``A Wedding,'' 1978

``Remember My Name,'' 1978

``Quintet,'' 1979

``A Perfect Couple,'' 1979

``Rich Kids,'' 1979

``Health,'' 1980

``Popeye,'' 1980

``Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,'' 1982

``Streamers,'' 1983

``Secret Honor,'' 1984

``Fool for Love,'' 1985

``Beyond Therapy,'' 1987

``O.C. and Stiggs,'' 1987

``Aria'' (one segment, ``Les Boreades,'') 1987

``Vincent & Theo,'' 1990

``The Player,'' 1992

``Short Cuts,'' 1993

``Pret-a-Porter'' (``Ready to Wear''), 1994

``Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,'' 1994

``Jazz '34,'' 1996

``Kansas City,'' 1996

``The Gingerbread Man,'' 1998

``Cookie's Fortune,'' 1999

``Dr. T. and the Women,'' 2000

``Gosford Park,'' 2001

``The Company,'' 2003

``Tanner on Tanner,'' 2004

``A Prairie Home Companion,'' 2006

SOURCES: The Film Encyclopedia; Internet Movie Database

-- Associated Press 

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(1 -- color) no caption (photo collage)

(2) Robert Altman, the irreverent satirist behind ``M*A*S*H,'' ``Nashville'' and ``The Player,'' who made a career out of bucking Hollywood management and story conventions, died Tuesday, his Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said.

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

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ALTMAN FILMS (see text)