Andrew Sarris

“I happened to interview Altman shortly after 3 Women had been conceived as a dream project…. I was impressed with Altman's resilience even though I was not overwhelmed by the casting of Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek as two of the three women. This was before Bernice Bobs Her Hair and Carrie, and both actresses struck me as too quirky in tandem to represent a reasonable range of womankind….

“…. The film inspired by that dream has since taken on an existence of its own. For one thing, Shelley Duvall wrote about 80 per cent of her dialogue, and thus can be said to have collaborated on her characterization with Altman. It is curious that Shelley Duvall's Millie Lammoreaux as a True Confessions type bears a striking resemblance to the gun-happy adolescent Sissy Spacek played in Terence Malick's Badlands. That the two actresses are virtually interchangeable [?], and the two characters virtually inseparable, gives 3 Women a passing resemblance to Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Of course, the extraordinarily vivid sensuality of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann provides a visual subtext of erotic entanglement at odds with the self-deprecating eccentricities of Duvall and Spacek. Consequently, Bergman's famous superimposition of one face on another verges on vampirish possession, whereas Altman distances himself from his characters and keeps them distinct from each other.

“There are other differences as well… Ever since Monika Bergman has dealt almost exclusively with articulate, attractive, accomplished protagonists with the capacity to serve as spokespersons for the director. Altman's characters, with the possible exception of the doomed McCabe, are down and away from the director's gaze, which mixes irony and compassion in about equal amounts. Perhaps the reason that Altman can allow his players so much freedom to improvise is that they are so completely confined in a formal box that all they actually improvise is the degree and dexterity of their wriggling. From an Aristotelian standpoint Shelley Duvall's Millie Lammoreaux and Sissy Spacek's Pinky Rose are such hopeless nitwits that they are not worthy of all the attention lavished on them. The last time that Bergman even took a stab at such a low-life character was with the Bibi Andersson unwed mother in Brink of Life, but one could never have imagined Bergman’s Bibi cast as either Millie or Pinky. Bergman's characters, regardless of class or sensibility, are afflicted with memory. The past is palpable in their personas. Altman's characters fashion their lives from moment to moment in a perpetual present with no roots in the past, and no regrets for lost innocence….

“…. [In the opening shots,] the sustained lyricism of Altman's (and Chuck Rosher's) contemplative and ever moving camera, the curiously affecting meticulousness of Shelley Duvall's motions and expressions counterpoised with the enchantingly childlike unabashedness of Sissy Spacek's mimickry and emotions, the moody sobriety of Gerald Busby's meditative score, and a spell cast by images that precede and transcend plot and character, all combine to transform potentially profane grotesquerie into sacred ritual….

“Once Millie Lammoreaux and Pinky Rose begin interacting as psychological basketcases desperately in search of love and identity, the film shifts for long stretches into a kooky comedy of manners. At times Spacek and Duvall become the Laurel and Hardy of the spaced-out age as they turn every trivial detail of everyday living into a monumental challenge to their ingenuity. Millie takes Pinky under her wing and into her apartment, and there are low-grade Texas-twangy echoes of All About Eve when Pinky filches Millie's precious diary for a quick look-see. There is a subsequent suggestion of Pinky's taking over Millie's life, but again, the stakes seem ridiculously low. How much like has Millie to lose? [I sensed a strong spirit.] If Pinky is first introduced to us as a sexual cipher, Millie is exposed again and again as a social leper. All her dates have ended in degradation, all her one-night stands have ended in oblivion, all her parties have ended in ridicule. It is not that Millie is surrounded by monsters. The people who mock her are shown doing so quietly and subtly and unostentatiously. They simply want to be rid of her, but she refuses to be rebuffed. Millie could be written off as a nerd were it not for something magical in Shelley Duvall's performance. Not since Katharine Hepburn's Alice Adams has a female character displayed as much wrong-headed generosity and courage as does Shelley Duvall's Millie. As I write these words I become aware that I am describing Millie as if she were a character on a printed page. But if I want to convey what 3 Women really is as opposed to what it merely means, I could do worse than try to evoke Shelley Duvall's stride as she walks from one social Clavary to another. There is so much spiritual grace in that stride, and so much wisdom in Altman's decision to follow that stride to the ends of his scenario, that one is ennobled simply by witnessing the bonds of compassion between the director and his actress. Nothing else in 3 Women is quite so overwhelming as the cumulative gallantry under stress of Shelley Duvall's Millie. It makes everything Fellini ever did with Giulietta Masina seem patronizing by comparison.

“Most people I have talked to cannot buy the last part of 3 Women…. What they don't say is that they secretly yearn for some humanist affirmation in a realistic framework…. Altman dares to 3 Women with an idea rather than with a feeling. It is not entirely clear how he got to that idea; but I do not mind the ellipsis since its effect is to make Millie and Pinky and … [Willie] larger than life. I cannot even pretend to know at this point what Altman feels he has to atone for, but I am awed by his eventual elevation of Millie and Pinky from groundlings to goddesses….”

Andrew Sarris
Village Voice, April 11, 1977
(Get Spacek)