Conceivably, schizophrenia is a malady to which all Robert Altman's major characters have been prone. Their behaviour is of little interest analysed on the level of clues or symptoms, but compelling where it gives evidence of large and dangerous attempts to comprehend an irrational world through personal experience, of minds which escape from the trap of an insane situation by going promptly, appropriately, healthily insane. Broad Laingian concepts of madness as socially conditioned, as a valid experience of a given situation, are as closely worked out in Altman's tragicomedies as in the explicit psychiatric challenge of Family Life. And perhaps just as such a theory opposes the psychiatric treatment of schizophrenia as a personal, functional disorder, so Altman has always opted for revealing his characters through complex situations rather than psychological puzzles. A precise and restless talent for experiment is evident in his switching through original combinations of...