The Screen
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
GAMBLERS SYNONYMOUS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O THE SCREEN In the opening scene of Catilornia Split, director Robert Altman misleads us in a way which typifies that peculiar vision he has of...
...Virtually everything in California Split follows suit...
...Unlike poker, Altman's game would seem to go on, the advantage changing between Bill and Charlie, high and low, indefinitely...
...In the end, of course, since the game is California split, we expect them both to turn up winners...
...Maybe this only goes to show that he really is a compulsive gambler, the sort who can't stand to win...
...It's a Ferfectly ambiguous gesture on which to end the film, and it makes us tolerate a measure of uncertainty in life that mere card players don't have to put up with once their hand has been called...
...This is what is so like Altman~this having something turn out to be true, but not in the way we were supposing...
...Throughou.t the game everyone is trying to figure out which way everyone else is playing his hand, high or low, and at the end all declare simultaneously, the two winners splitting the pot...
...If Charlie didn't want to be seen it was only because he hoped to get the guy alone, not because he was afraid...
...Bill flips Charlie's last card at him in such a way that it bounces off the table, and Charlie grabs for it, perhaps a little too adroitly, considering that he comes up with a joker...
...Though they haven't been cheating, they do become friends...
...But next thing we know Charlie follows the guy to the john and flattens him...
...He is also the one more likely to fall into moral turpitude by doing so, even though he has the respectable job and regular habits...
...He always does, really, .though he's never thought of putting it that way before...
...It's a stud poker game where both the best and worst hands win...
...However uncertain that opening scene may leave us about the relationship between Bill and Charlie, it does establish that Altman is going to play poker with us...
...and as is demonstrated by the punishment he exacts from that guy who beat him up, he does draw some kind of line somewhere...
...We no sooner think that we have Bill's number, that he has at last shown himself to be the lesser of the two men, than he walks out on his Reno lucky streak...
...Commonweal: 37...
...When they meet in a bar after Charlie takes the pot in that hand, we are sure they really are in cahoots as we now suspect...
...Then there's the one-armed piccolo player impersonated by Charlie to cheer Bill up...
...All that's happened, including their meeting in the bar, has been by chance...
...In M*A*S*H it was antic gore, in Brewster McCloud, bird shit, and here it's poker...
...A fellow named Charlie (Elliott Gould) and several other people are being dealt a hand of poker by Bill (George Segal...
...He goes about it as if he at least hopes to make a living at it...
...Must be afraid the guy will see him, we say to ourselves...
...One day he pawns everything he owns to get into a game in Reno so he can pay back a loan shark, and he wins in five figures...
...Charlie is the one we would have thought to come out ahead at the poker or crap tables and nowhere else, while Bill at first seemed more likely to be likable and maybe even heroic...
...The game Altman plays with us is the one referred to in the title, "California split...
...But that openendedness is what makes both life and Altman's view of it so much more than a game...
...In the end of the film he therefore repudiates the metaphor, and break/s the rules, by refusing to "declare" the way one is supposed to in a high-low game...
...In a sense, though, these two men do wind up in cahoots because they are capable of feeding each other's vices...
...Like most Airman movies, Calilornia Split is aces...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Bill, on the other hand, is the one who wins big at the tables...
...GAMBLERS SYNONYMOUS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O THE SCREEN In the opening scene of Catilornia Split, director Robert Altman misleads us in a way which typifies that peculiar vision he has of human experience...
...Then their conversation makes it clear that everything we are supposing is wrong...
...Just when we think that the gag is over--and that it's been, though amusing, not quite amusing enough to get to Bill---Charlie adds a sleight of hand that is the funniest sight gag either Bill or I have seen in years...
...It's another prostitute, a girl friend, who comes home and gently chases Bill out of the young innocent's bed...
...But the truth is that Charlie, the drifter who hangs out at the track and lives as a house guest of prostitutes, proves to be the steadier of the two men...
...Its finality is too neat, too trivial...
...Presumably Charlie and Bill don't know each other, but that wild wild card makes us wonder whether they aren't a couple of sharps working as a ,team...
...But ultimately Altman has the sense to see that this metaphor of a game of chance isn't adequate to either life or art...
...A bit earlier in his career Altman was very fond of the sort of central, controlling image that he returns to in Calilornia Split...
...There is never anything desperate or suicidal about his gambling...
...That Charlie is a real poker face...
...Someone like that does indeed make love to her, but it's not Bill...
...When Bill succumbs to .the charm of a simple-minded prostitute Charlie introduced him to, we think it's sweet that the girl is to be exploited by someone who, for once, might actually like her for herself...
...Or maybe the action should simply be taken at face value, as a sign of Bill's capacity to quit while he's ahead...
...In his movie version of this game, Altman keeps us guessing which of his two protagonists is really the high roller and which has the low moral character...
...Both of them do remain winning characters too, although, as usual in an Altman movie, not exactly in the ways we would have expected...
...At the track one day when he spots a bad loser who beat him up earlier, Charlie buries his face in a magazine...
Vol. 101 • October 1974 • No. 2
