McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) Dir: Robert Altman

During my two years of schooling at Tufts University, I enjoyed the many Film classes taught at that institution. Tufts was known for their School of Nutrition and International Law but my heart was in film. Two classes, in particular, stood out. English 301 Alfred Hitchcock was a great class but my favorite was English 302, Robert Altman’s America.

Up until that point, I only really knew Altman through his breakthrough movie, MASH. But I would come to learn much about the iconoclastic, maverick Altman. Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland nearly got Altman fired from directing MASH (Altman had an unusual style of filming) but once released, the film was a hit. It led him to have the power to shoot more great movies such as The Long Goodbye (Altman’s bizarre adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel with Gould as Philip Marlowe), Nashville and later, the terrific The Player and his final great film, Gosford Park. But Altman’s true masterpiece is his 1971 classic, McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

A gritty, revisionist Western, McCabe… tells a tale of the Ol’ West that explores the realities of how the West was won and who won it. Confident gambler John McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives in a small mining community and decides to open a brothel. The locals are taken in by his charisma and fast talk, but crafty prostitute Constance Miller (Julie Christie) realizes McCabe isn’t the man he portrays himself as and makes herself a partner in his business. The era of the Western was dead in Hollywood as the actors and directors who made them advanced past the ages of the audience. Invigorating an old genre, Altman brought a new view to the West and this movie showed the West’s scars and scabs and everything in between. Gene Siskel wrote, “(McCabe) is a brilliant film, not because of the story, but because of the way it’s told.” Altman portrays a West seized by losers, pimps and hookers and overran and out-muscled by big business.

Led by the outstanding soundtrack from Leonard Cohen, the atmosphere of the film is set in the initial shots as McCabe rides into town in miserable conditions. It isn’t a pretty community and the only structure that appears stable is the brand new church, that no one attends. McCabe and Constance Miller fill a need for the community of dreamers and losers and help build that community into something of a town. The irony of the film is that as McCabe is fighting for his life against the killers the bigger businessmen have sent, he is alone in the fight. The church, no one attends, catches fire and the town pulls together to put out the fire as the man most responsible for the growth of their town, breathes his last breath.

Did I mention Leonard Cohen did the soundtrack? The songs of Cohen haunt the images of the film and are in perfect syncopation with the film. I have no idea if it was Altman’s idea to put in The Stranger Song and Sisters of Mercy but whomever made that decision should be lauded.

Warren Beatty is terrific as McCabe and Julie Christie is still luminous (even a film about muck and grime couldn’t take away Christie’s beauty) but Altman preferred to shoot films with large ensembles. Actors like John Schuck, Rene Auberjonois and Keith Carradine appeared again and again in Altman movies as he preferred the look of the ‘everyman’ and ‘every woman’. It’s also why Shelley Duvall is in so many of his movies.

In more recent film history, Michael Winterbottom’s The Claim, is an interesting book end movie to McCabe … and these would be fun films to watch back to back. But, movies like these two don’t come around very often. It’s hard to find a director, such as Altman, who not only believes strongly in what he is creating but is, was, willing to risk it all to get it on film. Beatty, Christie and Altman never worked together again as conflict and clashes occurred often on set. And Altman was okay with that; he would rather have a film with Carradine and Duvall anyway.

My time at Tufts wasn’t the highlight of my life but I did enjoy those film classes. I had a pretty strong knowledge of Hitchcock but that class opened my eyes to films I will review in the coming weeks. But the Altman class changed the way I looked, broke down and studied film. It opened my eyes to new possibilities and isn’t that what education is supposed to be?

53 Great Films

• Miller’s Crossing Dir. Coen Brothers
• Chinatown Dir. Roman Polanski
• Lone Star Dir. John Sayles
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller Dir. Robert Altman