Nashville, the 1975 ensemble film by famed director Robert Altman which crystallized the canon of adventurous films that symbolized the “New Hollywood” of the 1970s, celebrates its 40th anniversary today.

Released in theaters on June 11, 1975, Nashville, which is a sprawling patchwork of 24 characters who intermingle in various ways over a weekend in the famed Tennessee city, remains one of the most risk-taking and eclectic motion pictures ever committed to celluloid. Full of rich characterizations; dialogue that appears to have been completely improvised; direction and staging that in many sequences make the picture almost seem in a documentary and cinema verite vein; sound that manifests from placements of microphones that seem to emanate from all four corners of the frames and of course; a musical soundtrack in which the actors in the film actually sing and even in some cases wrote the songs themselves (especially the Academy Award-winning “I’m Easy” by Keith Carradine), Nashville remains like an indie film raised to the highest apex, a film that in essence could and would never be released in today’s day and age, a true zeitgeist of its (and our) time.