--- title: "Nashville" year: 1975 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/nashville" fi1m_score: 89 critics_score: 90 critics_reviews: 19 published: "2026-09-16T10:11:48.789488+00:00" updated: "2026-09-16T10:12:02.479559+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Nashville (1975) Directed by Robert Altman · 2h 40m · MPA R · Drama, Comedy, Music **Fi1m score: 89** · Critics 90 from 19 reviews *In a sentence:* Singing country music looks easier than getting a word in > Robert Altman’s country-music drama rewards close attention with sharp comedy and an unexpected tenderness towards people desperate to be noticed. A few stretches dawdle, but we recommend giving its crowded conversations and unhurried songs the full evening. ## Synopsis In 1970s Nashville, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) and Tom Frank (Keith Carradine) move through a country-music scene where singers and political interests compete for attention. Opal (Geraldine Chaplin) moves among the same company. Musical performances and crowded conversations bring established entertainers into contact with people hoping to get close to them. Some want to keep their audience; others want a chance to be heard. With no single protagonist, the opening follows their intersecting lives through a city where access to the right person matters and several people are usually speaking at once. ## Review *Nashville* asks us to spend time among people who want attention, then makes the business of paying attention unusually demanding. Robert Altman puts country music beside political ambition and lets conversations overlap until following one person means missing part of another. This is a funny, patient and occasionally painful film, and we recommend it despite a few stretches that take too long. Even when someone is being ridiculous, the director remains interested in what they hope to achieve. Joan Tewkesbury’s screenplay follows several lives without giving any one person charge of the story. We have to learn how to watch it, and the first adjustment is to stop treating every interruption as something to be solved. The overlapping dialogue can be comic before any individual line registers. It also catches the familiar frustration of speaking to somebody who is waiting for their own turn. The jokes grow out of that inattention. Paul Lohmann’s cinematography gives the crowded scenes enough detail to reward a wandering eye. We can look beyond whoever is speaking and find somebody else worth watching, which helps these gatherings feel occupied by people with their own concerns. Editors Dennis M. Hill and Sidney Levin keep the separate lives in circulation without making every return feel like an appointment. The cutting can seem casual, but the ease with which we recognise a person or pick up a conversation is hard-earned. The music is given room to hold our attention on its own terms, with Karen Black and Ronee Blakley among its credited contributors. We were moved by Ronee Blakley’s singing in *Dues*. The hurt in her delivery makes Barbara Jean feel close to us, even within a film that keeps moving between people. The performance carries that feeling without making a joke of the country style. We can laugh at the hunger for applause and still understand why somebody would want to sing. The political material works because it belongs alongside the entertainers’ scramble for attention. A crowd ready to listen to a singer is also a crowd somebody else would like to address. The film does not need to stop and explain the attraction. Having enjoyed the music ourselves, we are less comfortable dismissing the audience’s enthusiasm as foolishness, even when political interests are trying to take advantage of it. There are costs to this much company. At 160 minutes, the film sometimes lets a sideline continue after we have understood what it offers, and the movement between people does not always disguise that slackness. Geraldine Chaplin’s Opal is a case in point: we tire of her sooner than the director does. Nor does the sound make allowances for divided attention; the voices can become tiring. These are real irritations, though they never outweighed our pleasure in spending time here. Anyone expecting a musical in which songs neatly advance a central story will need to adjust. Performances take up time here, and allowing us to hear them properly helps explain why these people care so much about being heard. Give the film an evening without trying to keep up another conversation on the sofa. It has quite enough of those already. *Fi1m score 89, published 16 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The consensus is emphatically positive: all 19 reviews praise Nashville, with agreement centring on Altman’s handling of the ensemble, overlapping dialogue and interwoven stories. Critics find a persuasive portrait of American ambition and self-deception in its country music scene, while repeatedly stressing the sympathy shown towards individual characters. The songs draw praise both as music and as occasions for revealing private feelings in public. Variety particularly singles out Ronee Blakley’s performances of ‘Tapedeck in His Tractor’ and ‘Dues’. The differences concern emphasis and accessibility rather than fundamental objections. The AV Club stresses compassion over attack in its reading of the satire. Reservations are scattered: The New York Times finds a few sequences that mark time, Sight and Sound notes inaccuracies in songs and costumes, and Collider warns that the scope and style may overwhelm newcomers to Altman. Even the more restrained assessments remain firmly appreciative. ### Reviews we read (19) - **Little White Lies**, Glenn Heath Jr (5/5/5): The critic hails Altman’s masterpiece as a stunning epic layering of music and delusion in a 4K restoration, praising its relevant satire on America’s obsession with access and façades. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/nashville-1975) - **Radio Times**, Adrian Turner (5/5): It is Altman’s magnum opus, breathtaking in scope and ambition as a dazzling mosaic of two dozen characters reflecting America through music, comedy and tragedy. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-abe9m5/nashville/) - **The Times**, Ed Potton (★★★★★): After 44 years the greatest of Altman’s sprawling ensemble movies is still captivating, with its huge cast, overlapping improvised dialogue, intertwining storylines and memorable tunes in the capital of country music. All of human life is here, along with the director’s hallmarks of subtle social commentary and non sequiturs. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/nashville-1975-review-b9sczxmkj) - **The AV Club**, Mike D'Angelo (A): The review defends Nashville as a sympathetic portrait of the city's misfits, losers, and dreamers rather than an attack, highlighting Altman's virtuoso juggling of ensemble threads and emotional peaks in public performances. It praises the film's exploration of internal contradictions and the mix of ridiculous yet inspiring elements. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/robert-altman-s-nashville-is-no-attack-on-the-city-1798179036) - **Empire**, Angie Errigo (90/100, inferred): The BFI restoration highlights Altman's dazzling, innovative 1975 classic as one of the most accomplished and influential films of the 1970s. The critic praises its mosaic of interwoven characters and themes that define the 'Altmanesque' style. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/nashville-review/) - **Financial Times**, Nigel Andrews (90/100, inferred): In a retrospective on Altman’s radical oeuvre, Nashville (1975) stands as arguably his greatest work and the greatest ensemble drama in US film history, whose teeming large-cast energy prefigured later masterpieces. A restored version’s UK run is welcomed as part of rediscovering the director’s transforming artistry. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/8e66bcdb-d60c-4995-9d14-9f160a5aac4e) - **Los Angeles Times**, Neal Gabler (90/100, inferred): Gabler describes Nashville as one of the best and most influential movies of the last 40 years, an indelible masterpiece whose fragmented storytelling, improvisational approach, and understanding of American dreams broke rules and influenced others. He notes its polarizing reception at the time but affirms its lasting status as a classic. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-mn-nashville-robert-altman-20150607-story.html) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (90/100, inferred): Ebert calls it the best American movie since Bonnie and Clyde, praising how it creates a microcosm of 1970s America through two dozen characters and enlarges the viewer's experience of people and humanity. He singles out the film's closing sequence with Barbara Harris singing 'It Don't Worry Me' as unforgettable and heartbreaking. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/nashville-1975) - **Slant Magazine**, Chuck Bowen (90/100, inferred): The critic calls Nashville one of the most revealing portraits of America ever made, celebrating its vast canvas of irreverent and destructive elements, empathetic scenes, and transcendence through music and characters. It notes the film's enduring stature as an ageless time capsule and uniquely American work, even if not Altman's absolute best. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/nashville/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Arthur Knight (90/100, inferred): The critic hails Altman's film as a vast, innovative masterwork exploring the appearances versus realities of the American scene through overlapping stories and characters in Nashville's music and political worlds. It praises the memorable ensemble, dense visuals and soundtrack, and calls it the most epochal American cinema event since Citizen Kane. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/nashville-thrs-1975-review-802038/) - **The Independent**, J. Romney (90/100, inferred): Altman's re-released Nashville remains a bracingly unruly, manic pageant and radical experiment in open-form cinema. The critic singles out the overlapping dialogue and ensemble performances for creating a complex portrait of showbusiness and American denial. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/nashville-15-15104.html) - **The New York Times**, Vincent Canby (90/100, inferred): Canby hails Nashville as the movie sensation against which all other 1975 American films will be measured, praising its enormous feeling, original and high-spirited qualities, and the way it showcases performers at career highs. He notes some weak spots like a few sequences that mark time but finds it the most provocative film Altman has made. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1975/06/12/archives/nashville-lively-film-of-many-parts.html) - **Time Out**, GA (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it a landmark American film and masterpiece, lauding its influence, narrative style, overlapping dialogue and portrait of a society abandoning ideals for fame and expediency. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/nashville) - **Variety**, Owen Gleiberman (90/100, inferred): Gleiberman calls it a teeming, sprawling, exultant, tragic, transporting masterpiece that reshaped his view of America as fractured and atomized, with its form mirroring the randomness of life and everyone talking past each other. He singles out Ronee Blakley's performance of 'Tapedeck in His Tractor' and 'Dues' as one of the most transcendent sequences in cinema history. [Read](https://variety.com/2025/film/columns/50-years-ago-robert-altmans-nashville-told-the-story-of-what-america-would-become-1236465293/) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (85/100, inferred): The re-released 1975 ensemble epic remains a unique state-of-the-nation portrait whose continuous country soundtrack and overlapping stories capture the troubled mid-70s American zeitgeist with compassion and wit. Altman’s control of the sprawling material is wonderful, though the complex, non-mocking attitude to country music stands out as particularly striking. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jun/25/nashville-review-robert-altman) - **Sight and Sound** (70/100, inferred): The critic lauds Altman’s sprawling, kaleidoscopic portrayal of Nashville society as authentic and engaging, highlighting the music, faces and complex character interactions while noting some inaccuracies in songs and costumes. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/nashville-1975-crams-music-city-into-bustling-slice-cinema) - **The Playlist**, Jessica Kiang (A+): The critic views the film as a snapshot of America through its country music scene, portraying a tangled web of strivers and characters in a bustling ensemble piece with overlapping dialogue and a rebellious sensibility. It praises the memorable, multifaceted characters and first-class soundtrack while noting its influence on later directors like Paul Thomas Anderson. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/robert-altman-best-essentials-20160531/4/) - **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (80/100, inferred): The critic calls Nashville Altman's opus and praises its enduring relevance as an insightful look at American culture, obsessions, politics, and the entertainment industry that has not dated. They note its sprawling ensemble and technical achievements but caution that its scope and style may overwhelm first-time viewers of Altman's work. [Read](https://collider.com/nashville-blu-ray-review/) - **The Skinny**, Jamie Dunn (★★★★): The critic calls Nashville a masterpiece full of contradictions, an epic built from small personal dramas that forms a compelling state-of-the-nation address. They single out the fully formed characters and first-rate tunes for particular praise. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/dvd-reviews/nashville) ## Details - **Director:** Robert Altman - **Director:** Robert Altman - **Writer:** Joan Tewkesbury - **Cinematography:** Paul Lohmann - **Editor:** Sidney Levin, Dennis M. Hill - **Music:** Arlene Barnett, Jonnie Barnett, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Gary Busey, Juan Grizzle, Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel, Joe Raposo - **Producer:** Robert Altman, Robert Eggenweiler, Scott Bushnell - **Cast:** David Arkin as Norman; Barbara Baxley as Lady Pearl; Ned Beatty as Delbert Reese; Karen Black as Connie White; Ronee Blakley as Barbara Jean; Timothy Brown as Tommy Brown; Keith Carradine as Tom Frank; Geraldine Chaplin as Opal - **Runtime:** 2h 40m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 11 June 1975 - **Genres:** Drama, Comedy, Music - **Budget:** $2 million - **Box office:** $10 million ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AU, CA, GB, IE, JP, NZ, UA, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1976: Best Director (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated) - César Award for Best Foreign Film 1976: César Award for Best Foreign Film (nominated) ## If you liked this - *The Rules of the Game* (1939), Fi1m 91: A crowded social comedy that keeps finding cruelty beneath impeccable manners. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-rules-of-the-game.md) - *Tampopo* (1985): A food comedy that wanders from its main story with good reason. - *Monsoon Wedding* (2001): Family obligations and private worries compete noisily around a public celebration. - *A Prairie Home Companion* (2006): Another crowded musical gathering, with more tenderness and a quieter sense of mortality. - *The Band's Visit* (2007): Musicians find awkward companionship in a comedy patient enough to let silence work. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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