General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Quintet

Quintet is a 1979 American science fiction drama directed by Robert Altman, set in a post-apocalyptic future ice age where the last survivors of humanity occupy their remaining time by playing a deadly board game called Quintet. It stars Paul Newman, Bibi Andersson, Fernando Rey, Vittorio Gassman, Brigitte Fossey, and Nina van Pallandt, was produced by Altman's Lion's Gate Films, and was released by Twentieth Century-Fox on 9 February 1979.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	9 February 1979, Los Angeles and New York; R rating; 118 minutes; science fiction and drama¹
Director and writers	Robert Altman, with Frank Barhydt, Patricia Resnick, and Lionel Chetwynd; produced by Lion's Gate Films, Inc.¹
Principal cast	Paul Newman (Essex), Bibi Andersson (Ambrosia), Fernando Rey (Grigor), Vittorio Gassman (St. Christopher), Brigitte Fossey (Vivia), Nina van Pallandt (Deuca)¹^•³
Setting	A frozen city after a nuclear holocaust has brought on a new ice age; the primary set was the deteriorating Expo 67 steel-grid building on Saint Helen's Island outside Montreal⁴^•¹
The game	Altman invented Quintet as an actual board game, complete with rules and pieces, to represent the culture of the film's future; in the story it is also played with living people, in which five must be killed and only one survives¹^•²
Cost and outcome	Production costs about $6.4 million and marketing $2.9 million; a May 1979 Variety article called the film a "financial disaster," and Fox moved it to the cable television market in September 1979¹
Critical reception	Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 27% from 11 reviews; audience score 37% from more than 500 ratings⁵

Spoilers

Plot

After a nuclear holocaust has thrown the world into another ice age, the seal hunter Essex (Paul Newman), his pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey), and her brother Francha (Tom Hill) wander the frozen landscape and reach a dying but still crowded city, where corpses are left in the snow for dogs to eat, no children are born, and the survivors pass the time playing a mysterious game called Quintet.⁴^•² No one explains how the game is played, and Grigor (Fernando Rey) appears to act as its referee.⁴ The game is played either as a board game or in real life; in the latter form five people must be killed and only one will survive.²

After Vivia and Francha lose, they are killed in a mysterious explosion. Essex, seeking revenge on the people who run the game, is drawn deeper into the lethal competition.⁴ According to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia summary, Vivia is accidentally killed during a game attack, along with what the film presents as Earth's last fetus; Essex joins the game vengefully, wins, kills his new lover Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson) in the process, and vanishes back into the snow.²

Production

Location and set. The filmmakers first considered shooting in Chicago before deciding to film the entire picture in the vicinity of Montreal, Canada. Principal photography was scheduled to begin 16 January 1978 for ten weeks.¹ The primary set was an open-air, steel-grid building on Saint Helen's Island in the Saint Lawrence River, originally built for the 1967 World's Fair (Expo 67) and retained afterward as the exhibition "Man and His World." Its deteriorating state suited Altman's frozen city in ruins. To keep every scene at the story's sub-freezing temperature, interior sets were built inside the exposed multi-story building, unprotected from winter weather; strong winds required welding scenery to the structure, and executive producer Tommy Thompson said the extreme cold was difficult for cast and crew because the set was hard to heat.¹ The Harvard Film Archive also notes winter vistas filmed in the Arctic Circle as well as at the Expo 67 site.⁶

The game and the secrecy. According to Altman, Quintet was an actual board game he invented himself, with rules and pieces, to represent the culture of the film's post-apocalyptic future. Cast and crew played it for fun on set, and there were plans to market a commercial version. Except for casting and location choices, Altman withheld pre-release publicity, including the plot, to avoid "conditioning" the audience; the set was closed and actors were asked not to discuss the project with the media. He used an international cast with various accents to "denationalize the story."¹

Newman's return. The film was Paul Newman's first after a year and a half away from acting; he had previously worked with Altman on Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976).¹

Key crew. Jean Boffety was the cinematographer, Tom Pierson composed the score, Dennis M. Hill edited, Leon Ericksen was production designer, and Wolf Kroeger was art director.¹^•³ The French Cinémathèque notes Boffety's imagery as central to the film's icy visual world.³

Reception and box office

The picture garnered mostly negative reviews. Alan Ladd, Jr., then president of Twentieth Century-Fox, said in a February 1979 Variety article that Altman did not have final editing cut on the "complicated" film, while the studio's own input was restricted by the director's vision and the remote location.¹ Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times critic who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, called it "the nearest Altman has ever come to a completely inexplicable film," finding the game's rules never decipherable and missing the human warmth of Altman's other 1970s work.⁷ The Washington Post's Judith Martin described the film as "numbing," with five grim players moving pieces while a sixth waits to challenge the survivor.⁸ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds 27% on the Tomatometer from 11 reviews.⁵

Commercially, production costs were approximately $6.4 million with $2.9 million in marketing expenses. A 4 May 1979 Variety article called Quintet a "financial disaster" and reported that Fox would quickly shift the picture to the cable television market in September 1979 to help offset losses.¹

Reassessment

Later commentary has been more divided than the original consensus. The British Film Institute's list of underrated Altman films notes that Quintet is helped by its distinctive look, with Wolf Kroeger's art direction and Leon Ericksen's production design creating the tundra through Jean Boffety's "Vaseline-glazed images."⁹ The Science Fiction Encyclopedia concludes that the film, "critically crucified on release, is perhaps better than the then-consensus suggested," while judging the pace glacial and the theme overintellectualized, and observing that it "bores the watcher, yet lingers for years in the mind."² The Harvard Film Archive, programming the film in its complete Altman retrospective, quotes Altman on the poor critical response: "I have this great optimism that always translates into pessimism."⁶ A 2025 Criterion Collection essay by the critic Carlos Valladares, a writer and film programmer, argues against the conventional view of the film as a failed experiment, describing it as a grief-marked, "glacier-slow, oneiric, trance-inducing" work that Altman defended to the end of his life.¹⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Science fiction and fantasy films (individual works) › Science fiction and fantasy films of the 1970s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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