Love and theft via Altman

“3 Women”

Stars: Sissy Spacek, Shelley Duvall, Janice Rule

(Criterion Collection, $40)

The plot: Spacek plays a childlike Texan named Pinky Rose, who, soon after arriving in a sleepy California desert resort town, gets a job working in an old folks spa. Pinky finds a role model at the spa in fellow attendant Millie Lammoureaux (Duvall), a fellow Texan, who prattles endlessly about clothes, men and women’s magazines, and is unaware that no one pays attention to her.

When Millie invites Pinky to be her roommate at the Purple Sage singles complex, little does she know that young Pinky is about to usurp her identity and life.

The third woman in the mix is Willie (Rule), a pregnant artist who paints odd humanoid/reptilian figures on the bottom of pools. Willie is married to a womanizing gun nut (Robert Fortier), who once appeared on the “Wyatt Earp” television series.

Auteur! Auteur!: “3 Women,” released in 1977, was the last of Altman’s great movies of the 1970s. After kicking around as a director of episodic TV, Altman became a critics’ darling in 1970 with his irreverent antiwar comedy “MASH” and subsequently became one of the most interesting, complex filmmakers of the influential decade. He also was one of the most prolific -- he made 13 films during the 1970s, including such contemporary classics as “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” “The Long Goodbye,” “Thieves Like Us” and “Nashville” as well as the lambasted “Brewster McCloud” and “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson.” After “3 Women,” though, Altman’s film career would suffer a long decline.

Extras: Stills galleries and TV and theatrical trailer, but the highlight of the disc is the commentary by Altman, who talks about his films as though he’s sitting with a friend. Outspoken and an eternal maverick, Altman invites you into his world, where he reveals his thought processes and freewheeling, improvisational working style.

If there is a dreamy, impressionistic quality to “3 Women,” the explanation comes in Altman’s comment that the film came to him as he slept. Shortly after he had left a high-profile project at a major studio in a dispute, he dreamed of the title, as well as that Duvall, with whom he had worked several times, and Spacek would be in the movie. It would take place in the desert and deal with identity theft. Though he didn’t know how the story would play out, he went to Fox and pitched the executives his dream scenario. He told them he could make it for just over $1 million, and the studio gave him the green light.

Awards: Duvall won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival and was named best actress by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. Spacek picked up the New York Film Critics Circle Award.

Look for: A young Dennis Christopher as a delivery man; John Cromwell, the director (and father of actor James Cromwell) in the role of Spacek’s elderly father.