Robert Altman - 1978
The visual style, pretty long loose takes, is maybe not quite as exaxt as 'The Long Goodbye'. It is perhaps slightly more similar to 'MASH', maybe a little less baroque. The innovations with sound, the delivery and of course the overlapping, is all present and correct here.
It's worth giving a few words to the narrative. We have huge casts, and moves between them, edits between masses of stories. None of them develops hugely, characterisation is really at play in the non-driving narrative conversations. Altman requires good actors, giving much with a little look, and he gets them. His scenes aren't very long, often just snippets of conversation.
The characters are a bit silly, verging on the characticature at the most, though Altman pretty much avoid this. There is the split of the authoritarians, and the (usually pot smoking / drinking) folks we come to like more, though really, everyone has their reasons.
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