Robert Altman was the great artist-journeyman of his generation: Whenever he fell out fashion, he just kept working until he fell back in again. The opposite of a control freak, Altman preferred to assemble the constituent parts of a film, throw them together, and see what happened -- his art was in the unexpected. Not all of the 35 feature films that resulted were brilliant (some are downright bad) but the elements gelled with enduring excellence in the following ten.

(AP Photo)