Altman undeniably achieved his greatest artistic success in television with Combat! - not coincidentally, the only TV show on which he exercised a degree of creative control. Though he only worked on the first of the series' five seasons before - again - getting himself fired, he was instrumental in casting the show and shaping its tone over the course of his nine episodes.
As noted in my last post, the arc of Altman's TV work up to this point has been a refinement of his technique, the honing of his skills as a gifted and eloquent journeyman. Combat!, then, serves as a first transition from that classical style to the director's preferred method of controlled chaos. Working closely with cinematographer Robert Hauser, Altman integrated verité flourishes, often using a handheld camera and frenetic cutting - and not just, as one would expect, in combat sequences, but often in moments of joy and celebration. One episode, "The Volunteer," opens with just such a scene, a manic example of a classic Altman party scene as the squad arrives to a hero's welcome in a French village.
The first of Altman's episodes, "Any Second Now," is one of two to feature series co-star Rick Jason, a stiff-jawed leading man who stood in sharp contrast to his partner in the show, haunted method actor Vic Morrow. Altman and Morrow bonded instantly, and the actor's performances emanate a rugged intensity that the director seizes avidly onto. In Morrow's Sgt. Saunders can be found the show's commentary on the fultility of war and its impact on fighting men, all expressed in his hunched shoulders, his reserved displeasure at nonsensical orders from above and the terse execution of his duty, his concern for the men under his command voiced as bitter temperament.
"Any Second Now" has Jason's Lt. Hanley trapped under rubble and a time bomb in a church as a British bomb disposal expert cautiously labors to defuse the device. It features two of the hallmarks of Altman's tenure on the show: tense, claustrophobic suspense and bombed-out Catholic iconography. These elements both reach an almost self-parodic fever pitch in "I Swear By Apollo," when the squad kidnaps a Nazi doctor to operate on a wounded Frenchman with vital secrets. The operation takes place in a convent full of shrouded, cloistered nuns who provide a ghostly, silent presence throughout the impressionistic episode.
The other Jason episode, "Escape To Nowhere," is a less successful show, though there is a tense chase through a train yard that unfolds without a musical score - another touch that Altman, obviously experimenting with the impact of sound on image, employs often in Combat! Many of his episodes use minimal music, ramping up the tension of battle with natural sounds and silences.
Other Altman episodes include the comedic "The Prisoner," featuring comedian and semi-regular Shecky Greene and yet another role for the director's longtime compatriot Keenan Wynn (as well as a brief early appearance by future M*A*S*H star Tom Skerritt); "Cat and Mouse," the sole episode also written by Altman, where Morrow is trapped in a mill with angry fellow sergeant Albert Salmi; and "Off Limits," which focuses on an uneasy love triangle. Future Altman regular Michael Murphy shows up in a couple of episodes, as does future A Wedding co-screenwriter John Considine.
The standout episode of Altman's run and the series as a whole is "Survival," in which Morrow is trapped in a burning barn and, shell-shocked by burnt hands and smoke inhalation and presumed dead by his fellow soldiers, wanders the countryside in a daze, unable to use his hands and hallucinating a dead brother. It's a stunningly grim episode highlighted by a stunning collage of sounds - and, Altman insists, it got him fired from the show.
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