That Cold Day in the Park

Made immediately before MASH, this has Sandy Dennis, in her characteristic role as a frustrated spinster, picking up a dropout (Burns) on a Vancouver park bench and inviting him home for food, care and shelter. The results are distressingly predictable (though, to be fair to Altman, this area of modern Gothic hadn't been quite so overworked in 1969). With signs of the visual daring evident in Altman's later work, however, there is sufficient interest in his treatment of yet another woman character going bananas to repay committed admirers.