McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Plot synopsis:
In 1902 Washington State, a gambler named John McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives mysteriously and mumbling to himself in the town of Presbyterian Church (named after its only substantial building, a tall but mostly unused [in the film] chapel). McCabe quickly takes a dominant position over the town's simple-minded and lethargic miners, thanks to his aggressive personality and rumors that he is a gunfighter.
McCabe establishes a makeshift brothel, consisting of three prostitutes purchased for $200 from a pimp in the nearby town of Bearpaw. British cockney Constance Miller (Julie Christie) arrives in town and tells him she could run a brothel for him more profitably; unknown to him she is addicted to opium. The two become financially successful business partners, open a higher class establishment, including a bathhouse for hygiene, and a love interest develops between the two.
As the town becomes richer, Sears (Michael Murphy) and Hollander (Antony Holland), a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company in Bearpaw, arrive to buy out McCabe's business, as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Shaughnessy is notorious for having people killed when they refuse to sell. McCabe does not want to sell at their initial price of $5,500, but he overplays his hand in the negotiations in spite of Mrs. Miller's warnings that he is underestimating the violence that will ensue if they do not take the money.
Three bounty hunters—Butler (Hugh Millais), Breed (Jace Van Der Veen) and Kid (Manfred Schulz)—are dispatched by the mining company to kill McCabe, as well as make an example of him, but he refuses to abandon the town. Clearly afraid of the gunmen when they arrive in town, McCabe initially tries to appease them. Reflecting back to early in the film when he's reputed to be a gunfighter (aka Pudgy McCabe), who shot someone in a card game, Butler confronts McCabe about the incident. After hearing McCabe's story, with the addition that the gun was a Derringer, Butler proclaims that McCabe has never killed anyone in his life. McCabe later tries to find Sears and Hollander to try to settle on a price, but upon learning that they have left the area, he visits lawyer Clement Samuels (William Devane) to try to obtain legal protection from Harrison Shaughnessy. Although the lawyer agrees to help McCabe bust the mining company's monopoly on the area, McCabe returns to town convinced that he must face the bounty hunters on his own.
When a lethal confrontation becomes inevitable, McCabe arms himself and hides in the chapel during the early morning hours, but is evicted by the armed pastor, who is then shot by Butler in a case of mistaken identity. A broken lantern starts a fire in the church and the townspeople rush to help extinguish it. McCabe continues his evasion and, by shooting them in the back from hidden positions, kills two of the would-be assassins, one of whom wounds McCabe as he falls. As the townsfolk mobilize to fight the chapel fire, McCabe plays cat-and-mouse with the last gunman, Butler. McCabe is shot in the back and mortally wounded but feigns death and kills Butler with a Derringer when he approaches to confirm McCabe's identity. While the townspeople celebrate extinguishing the fire, McCabe dies alone in the snow and Mrs. Miller visits an opium den.

Tags: cult, humor, murder, atmospheric, romantic

Review:
Leonard Cohen's songs don't seem an ordinary choice for a western, but Robert Altman was no ordinary director, and his "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" was definitely not your traditional western.
And, more than anything, it's a love story.John McCabe (Warren Beatty), charismatic but no so smart, sets up a whorehouse in the Old West.
Constance Miller (Julie Christie), beautiful, strong and determined, soon arrives in town and offers to run the "business" and share the profits with McCabe.
It's the beginning of his, her and the town's doom.Even when exploring such a visual genre as the western (and visually the film is also very compelling, with great use of real snow and a beautifully shot "duel" on a bridge), Altman uses one of his most notorious trademarks: the overlapping dialogue, commonly used in ensembles but also wisely used in a more intimate, character-driven story like this.
Beatty gives one of his most subtle, captivating performances, and Christie empowers Mrs. Miller with flesh and blood - she was definitely one of the most beautiful and intriguing actresses of her time, alongside Faye Dunaway and Jane Fonda, who set up a standard for beautiful, strong women who were much more than sheer eye candy.
So, next time someone says Clint Eastwood reinvented the western with his masterpiece "Unforgiven", remember: 21 years before, Altman had experimented and succeeded on that with his "McCabe & Mrs. Miller".
The first thing to know about Robert Altman's revisionist Western "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is that it takes place in Washington state.
True to its title, the story centers on gambler and brothel owner John McCabe (Warren Beatty) and his shrewd business partner, Mrs. Constance Miller (Julie Christie).
Greater than the sum of its parts, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is memorable for the pervasive but understated mood that runs through every frame, creating a truly atmospheric and humanistic film..
And unlike most Westerns, which are plot driven, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is less about plot than about the tone or mood of the frontier setting.The film takes place in the Pacific Northwest.
In bucking cinematic tradition, therefore, this film deserves respect, because it is at least unusual, and perhaps even closer in some ways to the ambiance of life on the American frontier than our stereotyped notions, as depicted in typical John Wayne movies.Not that the plot is unimportant.
In those scenes, I think they went overboard with the ultra dim lighting.Strictly atypical for the Western genre, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" provides a pleasant change from cinematic stereotypes, and conveys a different perspective on life in the Old West.
Few westerns have succeeded so strangely yet so completely in evoking a sense of place and time than Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs Miller".
But then "MASH" wasn't a conventional war movie either just as "Nashville" wasn't really about the country music business.As for McCabe himself, Beatty plays him with the same laconic, stammering mannerisms he applies to all his roles, (and which he seems either blessed or cursed with in real life), and which actually makes him a perfect Altman hero, (or anti-hero, if you prefer).
One of the few "cowboys" in the film dies in his underwear.By a long shot, then, this is not your typical western, but it is better.The wooden characters of old are replaced with real people to whom we can relate and about whom we can care.
The West was not the nicest place to live; it was dangerous and inhospitable as it is in McCabe.I could go on and on about how Altman inverts the western film tradition throughout the movie (as well as how he dismantles the notion that capitalism is a good economic and social system), but I will not.
I've lived with it's haunting scenes for a quarter of a century and, as with anything of depth, constantly find new charms in my old love.From the evocative lyrics of the opening score to it's sudden chilling and deadly encounters, this movie lives in your mind long after the final blizzard cloaks the frame.If one is a contrarian I would guess the only thing to do after seeing this for perhaps the fiftieth time is to begin looking for that moment where someone, anyone has put a foot wrong in this production.
I mean, it's pretty clear early on that McCabe is a bit of a buffoon, but I think this is the crucial point in the film when we know we really care about his fate.Wonderfully acted by Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in the lead roles(as well as the supporting cast), being in the hands of Robert Altman, and with some great music by Leonard Cohen, McCabe & Mrs. Miller proves itself as a great, great movie.
And of those that do, most convey style only, not a place, not a whole presentation of the way the world works.This film is about the best example I know where the world is 'real,' the situation governs everything and the primary substance is the presentation of a Shakespearian quality cosmology of fate.The camera moves not so much with the story, but it enters and leaves.
Robert Altman puts his unique spin on the Western, and gives us a haunting and mournful film, and one of the best in his canon.Warren Beatty buries himself underneath a bushy beard and an enormous fur coat to play McCabe, an opportunist who considers himself to have much more business savvy than he actually does.
These two develop a timid affection for one another that's never overtly expressed, but their relationship doesn't have time to prosper, as a trio of hit men arrive to rub out McCabe after he refuses to sell his holdings to a corporation intent on buying him out.Not surprisingly, considering the director, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is a strange film.
The harsh environment is a character itself, and few movies have a more memorable ending, with McCabe engaged in a most unconventional shoot out amid waist-high drifts of snow.Altman is of course interested in debunking the usual Western myths.
Vilmos Zsigmond bathes everything in an ethereal light, and if there are images of icy starkness, there are also reverse images of rich warmth, notably those that take place in the whorehouse itself, which ironically becomes much more of a civilizing agent and cultural epicenter for the small town than the church that figures so prominently in other ways.One of the best from Altman's golden period as a director, and one of the best films to emerge from any director in the 1970s.Grade: A.
Robert Altman's downbeat, new-fangled western from Edmund Naughton's book "McCabe" was overlooked at the time of its release but in the past years has garnered a sterling critical following.
Altman creates a solemn, wintry atmosphere for the movie which gives the audience a certain sense of time and place, but the action in this sorry little town is limited--most of the story being made up of vignettes--and Altman's pacing is deliberately slow.
Robert Altman's almost painfully unromanticized vision of the Old West, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is the kind of film that just isn't made anymore.
Warren Beatty and Julie Christie are impressive as the deeply flawed but still sympathetic title characters, Leonard Cohen's songs fit the murky, tragic mood of the film perfectly (despite having been written and recorded a number of years before), and Altman directs with a sure hand.
The story of entrepreneur John McCabe (Warren Beatty), who sets up a whorehouse in a western town with the help of Constance Miller (Julie Christie) is interesting but ultimately too difficult to be worthwhile.
Warren Beatty plays John McCabe, who sets up a brothel in a small town in the Pacific Northwest around the turn of the century.
It almost doesn't suffice to call "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" a western; it's more surreal and gritty than we would expect.Robert Altman made a masterpiece in the true sense of the word.
There then appears an ex-whore named Mrs Miller (Julie Christie) who offers to use her experience to help McCabe run his business, while sharing in the profits .
During post-production on this film, 'Robert Altman' was having a difficult time finding a proper musical score, until he attended a party where the album "Songs of Leonard Cohen" was playing and noticed that several songs from the album seemed to fit in with the overall mood and themes of the movie .
Colorful and evocative cinematography in Panavisión by classic cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond , giving a rich texture on the Western atmosphere .The motion picture was well directed by Robert Altman who offers an adequate image of Western period , as he deglamorizes ordinary mood with his realist sights .
With its dark imagery and unusual story, it paved the way for modern pieces of art such as Unforgiven, There Will Be Blood and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.Removing all the varnish applied to the Old West, the film gives an honest account of John McCabe, a man who is essentially a gambler.
A heavy western dealing with themes of isolation and redeemers, McCabe and Mrs. Miller came off a touch thematically weighed down.Upon his arrival to the town of Presbyterian Church, gambler John McCabe (Warren Beatty) quickly learns that the town of God is nearly God-less, as the church remains under construction.
The audience eventually starts rooting for McCabe, in hopes that someday find his leaves.All-in-all, I applaud Robert Altman for providing audiences with such a deep film, and bringing such allegory and theme to the western genre.
If only the director had more faith in his audience to reach the conclusions he was intending, rather than weighing down the film with so much symbolism, McCabe and Mrs. Miller could have risen to "Classic" status outside of the western genre.
Julie Christie is a great beauty but here she's deliberately "uglied up" so as to add to the film's perceived authenticity.It's a revisionist western and a good one.
The film begins with McCabe (Warren Beatty) coming into a dirty western mining town and setting up a brothel.
So, in this sense, I am happy to see a film like "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" because it presents a stark contrast to the squeaky clean and silly image we used to get in westerns.
McCabe and Mrs Miller, although it does have a fine story, great direction, a very good script and well realised characters, it is more a mood piece than anything else, and the mood is really quite haunting.
I would recommend this movie for any fan of revisionist westerns, Robert Altman or slow-building, moody films; I wouldn't recommend it for anyone seeking an action-packed, shoot'em up kind of movie..
The end of the film is extremely well done, with the close up of McCabe freezing to death in the snow, as the camera blurs out, and cutting back to Mrs. Miller getting high in the opium den.
Music is by Leonard Cohen and cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond.A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in the remote mining town of Presbyterian Church, as their enterprise booms it comes to the attention of a large mining corporation who want to buy the action.Altman's grim and dirty slice of the Old West (Northwestern here to be precise) is a divisive picture in Western fan circles.
Put up as a flag bearer for the Anti-Western splinter, a mud and rags Oater for terminology purpose, there is no denying the quality on show across the board.Set in bleak winter time, Altman and his crew pour on the atmospherics in practically every frame, with the director using his familiar film making trademarks (overlap conversations, realistic movement of characters in framing shots etc) for maximum impact.
While Zsigmond brilliantly photographs the extreme difference between the homely feel of the interiors, with that of the cold snowy wilderness outside the doors, where the muted colours ooze period flavour.Purposely built for the film, the town of Presbyterian Church is a sea of mud, snow and timber, where the weather is perpetually dank, the surroundings enveloping chief protagonist McCabe like an unearthly portent.
Right from the first shot of 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller', Robert Altman leaves no stone unturned to subvert, toy with and deconstruct every trope of the conventional Western.
Altman shakes up the gender politics by making Julie Christie's character of Mrs. Miller(Constance) a strong, independent woman who is clearly intellectually superior to Mccabe.
Other than work, there is nothing much to do in this area.This film is about a businessman named John McCabe (Warren Beatty) who builds himself a whorehouse in this remote Western town.
McCabe is dim-witted when it comes to business, and I love how Mrs. Miller changes that.Another interesting item about the film is the music.
This town features a Presbyterian Church, which plays a prominent role in the plot and in the ending, where there is a cat-and-mouse shootout.McCabe and Mrs. Miller is an excellent film and one of Altman's masterpieces.
Warren Beatty's performance (not too far from his real life persona)as a small town entrepreneur and part-time pimp, is his best and so is Julie Christie's (as the Madame/original-feminist with more business sense than Beatty).
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Robert Altman's western about the dimwitted McCabe (Warren Beatty) who goes to the woods of Washington to open a whorehouse but since he doesn't know the business too well, he takes in a partner, Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie).
Warren Beatty and Julie Christie really impress as the titular McCabe and Mrs Miller and the rest of the cast are pretty solid too.
Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" came a year after his breakout hit "M.A.S.H." and found him subverting the Western genre.
As for the soundtrack, Leonard Cohen's songs prove to be ideally suited to the film.Ultimately, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is an engrossing Western that doesn't rely on convention.
Few westerns are quite as good as this; Robert Altman's film is a dreamy nightmare western set in the turn of the century in a small woods-town where Mr. McCabe (Warren Beatty in his best performance) arrives to make a profit of starting businesses concerning gambling and women, the latter getting him involved with Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie).
Among these I would include "Short Cuts," "Popeye" and "Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean." His two worst efforts, however, are probably his two Western films, "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson" (quite possibly the worst Western ever made) and this incredibly overrated film."McCabe" does have some good points, which include terrific attention to detail in art direction-set decoration and Julie Christie's excellent performance, but these are not enough to overcome poorly lit photography, the annoyingly unclear overlapped dialogue, Beatty's poor acting and Leonard Cohen's insipid musical score.
It is part the Leonard Cohen music, part the ambiguity of the characters and part the general indictment of capitalism.Of all of the directors storied films, McCabe is probably the most visually appealing.
The Cohen music made it seem like a "hippified" western in 1971, but like the entire film, has stood the test of time and now seems classic.One last comment about Warren Beatty.
Like: Robert Altman, Leonard Cohen, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.
A wonderful Warren Beatty stars in the title role of two bit gambler John McCabe, who gets the idea to open a saloon & whorehouse in the small mining town of Presbyterian Church.
"McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is a work of cinematic brilliance, not only because of its fascinating characters, unique plot, and entertaining dialogue-but also because of its setting and atmosphere!
Julie Christie impresses with her charming and chilling performance as the lovely Mrs. Miller, while Warren Beatty is shockingly good as the tragic protagonist McCabe.
His luck improves with the arrival of Mrs. Miller a former cockney prostitute who bets she can make McCabe's budding business much more profitable.By the sounds of it, director Robert Altman is constructing a western in the mode of Man of the West (1958) or The Far Country (1954) (albeit with a brothel involved).
I am personally torn between the films very purposeful demystifying of the old west and at times forceful indignation towards it.McCabe and Mrs. Miller is certainly not for everyone, the least of all unabashed fans of the western genre.
Finally, while those who were never fans if Robert Altman's oeuvre will find nothing new to really gravitate towards, there's no denying McCabe and Mrs. Miller is bar-none one of his best films..
The movie takes its time, but I found the film incredibly engaging because of the performances of Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.
His songs worked well with the film and it breathed more life into this western.Robert Altman's film is about a businessman named John McCabe who builds a whorehouse in a remote Western town.
Soon after that, several businessmen arrives asking to buy McCabe's business, but his answer may bring consequences to himself, Mrs. Miller, and the whole town.Also prevalent in 70's movies are films that don't rely on big casts.
Despite some horses and odd scenes of fighting, "Mccabe and Mrs.Miller" is not at all a western in the real sense of the word.
He opens a brothel in this rough frontier town.Success comes in the form of Mrs Miller played by the remarkable Julie Christie a whore, madam and opium smoker who has big ideas and dreams earns both a lot of money which attracts the attention of a corporation which makes an offer to McCabe to buy his holdings.This is not a fast moving film, nor a shoot em up western.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is probably the film, if not as much than Nashville more than the Player, that critics praise to the heavens when it comes to Robert Altman.