The explosion in popularity of the DVD format has created a new set of both opportunities and challenges for studios eager to exploit their back catalogues. For every comprehensive set like Warner Bros.’ recent Bette Davis Collections, there’s another — or, truth be told, probably three or four — weirdly cobbled together affairs, a rationalized way for studios to justify the cost of releasing marginal or niche titles. Ladies and gentlemen, meet 20th Century Fox’s Robert Altman Collection.

Altman has always been known as a bit of an iconoclast, a savvy corruptor of studio policy and preference. Actors love him because his films are partly mapped out, partly of-the-moment discovered treasures, yet this makes for not only tremendous financial risk, generally speaking, but also a filmography as hit-and-miss as it is narratively diverse. Any representative career sampling, then, is bound to include some highs and lows, even within the same movie. A quartet of diverse flicks makes up this Robert Altman Collection; two are rated R, two are rated PG. The biggest hit of the bunch, 1970’s Best Picture Oscar nominee M*A*S*H, is the odd film out here, and in some ways the least essential, or at least the least related to the rest of the lessons this set teaches us.

Starring Mia Farrow, Lauren Hutton, Carol Burnett, Desi Arnaz, Jr. and silent film legend Lillian Gish, 1978’s A Wedding evidences the director’s abiding love of shaggy ensembles over all else, telling the story of a handsome rogue and blushing bride-to-be whose nuptials are intersected by an obsessed wedding planner, a drunken doctor, meddling relatives and a beleaguered priest. A few moments pop out, but the movie is overall terribly self-indulgent and meandering. A Perfect Couple, from the following year, is a relationship companion piece of sorts, in that Altman cooked up the nascent idea of two young lovers (Marta Heflin and Paul Dooley) tripping through an unusual courtship on the aforementioned film. Formless and just as sprawling, at 111 minutes, it’s a movie that doesn’t live up to its title, but it does score points for astutely predicting the ascendancy of computer dating services.

Those wondering why Paul Newman doesn’t or didn’t do more science-fiction movies, meanwhile, will find their answer in 1979’s Quintet. The salad dressing and popcorn pitchman stars alongside Brigitte Fossey in a film billed as “one man against the world,” no doubt an attempted evocation of his Cool Hand Luke character. Thing is, this is just a weird, weird film. Set against a windswept, post-apocalyptic Ice Age, its characters all live to play — like, literally — a backgammon-inspired board game, created just for the Montreal-shot movie, in which the loser is then murdered. As the brooding Essex, Newman looks mightily unhappy under his Davy Crockett coonskin cap and fur-meets-burlap rags, and not without cause. The bizarre incongruity of it all carries you along for about 20 minutes, but that unfortunately still leaves 100 minutes more. “The thrill is just the magic of it, of making someone sit in their chair for two hours and be curious,” explains Altman in an interview featurette at film’s end. Well, Bob, the sitting, yes. The rest… not so much.

Altman’s audio commentary track, a still photo gallery and the AMC Backstory episode on the film complement the M*A*S*H disc, but the real, if adjusted and to-scale, windfall lies in brief featurettes on the other films that include up-to-date interviews with Altman, his prop master/production designer son Stephen, editor Dennis Hill and others from his steadfastly loyal production team. They’re remarkably frank and wide-ranging, and give crystalline insight into the auteur’s reasoning and thought processes, even if the final product doesn’t meet its intended mark. For filmmakers as risk takers, Altman is an emboldening, sterling example. To purchase the DVD set via Amazon, click here. C (Movies) B (Discs)