McCabe and Mrs Miller (15.)
Directed by Robert Altman. 1971.
Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine and Michael Murphy. 121 mins. Out now, released by Warners on their Premium Collection, containing the film on Blu-ray, DVD or download.
All great Altman films have something of the miraculous about them, but I don't think any of them are quite as miraculous as this western. As a hit-and-hope director, one who seemed to go into projects with rather vague aims as to what he wanted to achieve and simply trusted his ability to bring the best out of his collaborators and come up with something special, the finished results must always have been something of surprise and often not a very pleasant one. But surely, when he came to look over McCabe and Mrs Miller the results must have been beyond his best hopes. McCabe and Mrs Miller is like a fluky trick shot, something you couldn't do again even if you tried it another hundred times. It's a comedy western that breaks your heart.
The miracle perhaps is that anyone thought it was worth doing at all; there's is nothing distinctive in the material. It's a revisionist western made during the Great Revisionist Western Rush of the 60s and 70s, when such enterprises were ten a penny. McCabe (Beatty) is a prospector/gambler/entrepreneur who sets about building up the mining town of Presbyterian Church. Then an ambitious madam Mrs Miller (Christie) turns up with a proposition to build a fancy whore house that she will run for him. The operation is so successful that soon he is the recipient of another, more forceful, business proposal.
The film may look remarkable now but at the time it sounded like a nightmare. The soundtrack was a particular bone of contention. Altman was already known for his overlapping dialogue but this time he allowed all the on set noise – footsteps, door slamming to be recorded at natural volume, often drowning out the dialogue. Yet as someone who is always complaining about not being able to hear what is being said in movies, I got through this without resorting to subtitles (which was rarely the case with Capaldi's Dr Who.) You can make out what needs to be made out quite clearly.
The Altman gang is all there. There are lots of the faces that stuck with him after MASH, as well as some new ones. Keith Carradine made his film debut and he's great as a golly gosh innocent boy (and is in one of the film's defining scenes) but you'd never guess this goofy kid had a film career in him. The location in British Columbia looks like a desperate place to be stuck in but the fun of being with Altman must have made the rain and the wind and the snow all worthwhile.
It is though still the stars' film. Like her character, Christie bustles into town and immediately gets the run of things, while Beatty is.... well, what exactly is Beatty here? The accepted explanation for Beatty's magnificent performance is that Altman threw him into such a loop, challenged him and knocked him out of his comfort zone that he came up with something even he didn't know he had in him. Maybe, but Beatty seems very much in control to me. Like all Beatty performances it is fundamentally a self-portrait, and a rather self-pitying one: he's an ambitious, charismatic but indecisive man, a visionary who will ultimately be defeated by lesser men.
Many filmmakers can craft a visual metaphor that will impress you, but maybe Altman was the only one that made you feel them. Like the ending of Nashville, the conclusion of McCabe and Mrs Miller really awes you in its ability to express a big statement so eloquently and with such poignancy. The final showdown between McCabe and three men who are there to kill him is gripping and appalling; Beatty stumbling through the snow ignored by the rest of the town, the people he brought together, as they try to put out the fire in a church. It goes on for ages, so long that the juxtaposition of his struggle for survival, against the collective effort to preserve a piece of property, becomes something you really feel. It's a remarkable sequence, one that I suspect was the inspiration for the end of The Shining and Once Upon A Time In America.
It's so fun, so light, so full of joy and community yet it chills your soul. Many films are moving and haunting and touching, but in a transient way that is easily brushed off. McCabe really pierces through your defences, shows you the wonder but also the misery. The terrible randomness of life has rarely been caught on camera with such force, and yet with such insouciance, and all of it presented to you in such pretty packaging.
The film doesn't have a soundtrack as such, just a few songs by Leonard Cohen. It works perfectly, even though there is no real connection between them and the film. Whenever there's a moment of peace you hear him huskily intoning about being some Joseph looking for a manger or reaching for the sky just to surrender. The implication is that life is the noise we make to cover up mournful droning of the Leonard Cohen album that is playing constantly in the background.
Directed by Robert Altman. 1971.
Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine and Michael Murphy. 121 mins. Out now, released by Warners on their Premium Collection, containing the film on Blu-ray, DVD or download.
All great Altman films have something of the miraculous about them, but I don't think any of them are quite as miraculous as this western. As a hit-and-hope director, one who seemed to go into projects with rather vague aims as to what he wanted to achieve and simply trusted his ability to bring the best out of his collaborators and come up with something special, the finished results must always have been something of surprise and often not a very pleasant one. But surely, when he came to look over McCabe and Mrs Miller the results must have been beyond his best hopes. McCabe and Mrs Miller is like a fluky trick shot, something you couldn't do again even if you tried it another hundred times. It's a comedy western that breaks your heart.
The miracle perhaps is that anyone thought it was worth doing at all; there's is nothing distinctive in the material. It's a revisionist western made during the Great Revisionist Western Rush of the 60s and 70s, when such enterprises were ten a penny. McCabe (Beatty) is a prospector/gambler/entrepreneur who sets about building up the mining town of Presbyterian Church. Then an ambitious madam Mrs Miller (Christie) turns up with a proposition to build a fancy whore house that she will run for him. The operation is so successful that soon he is the recipient of another, more forceful, business proposal.
The film may look remarkable now but at the time it sounded like a nightmare. The soundtrack was a particular bone of contention. Altman was already known for his overlapping dialogue but this time he allowed all the on set noise – footsteps, door slamming to be recorded at natural volume, often drowning out the dialogue. Yet as someone who is always complaining about not being able to hear what is being said in movies, I got through this without resorting to subtitles (which was rarely the case with Capaldi's Dr Who.) You can make out what needs to be made out quite clearly.
The Altman gang is all there. There are lots of the faces that stuck with him after MASH, as well as some new ones. Keith Carradine made his film debut and he's great as a golly gosh innocent boy (and is in one of the film's defining scenes) but you'd never guess this goofy kid had a film career in him. The location in British Columbia looks like a desperate place to be stuck in but the fun of being with Altman must have made the rain and the wind and the snow all worthwhile.
It is though still the stars' film. Like her character, Christie bustles into town and immediately gets the run of things, while Beatty is.... well, what exactly is Beatty here? The accepted explanation for Beatty's magnificent performance is that Altman threw him into such a loop, challenged him and knocked him out of his comfort zone that he came up with something even he didn't know he had in him. Maybe, but Beatty seems very much in control to me. Like all Beatty performances it is fundamentally a self-portrait, and a rather self-pitying one: he's an ambitious, charismatic but indecisive man, a visionary who will ultimately be defeated by lesser men.
Many filmmakers can craft a visual metaphor that will impress you, but maybe Altman was the only one that made you feel them. Like the ending of Nashville, the conclusion of McCabe and Mrs Miller really awes you in its ability to express a big statement so eloquently and with such poignancy. The final showdown between McCabe and three men who are there to kill him is gripping and appalling; Beatty stumbling through the snow ignored by the rest of the town, the people he brought together, as they try to put out the fire in a church. It goes on for ages, so long that the juxtaposition of his struggle for survival, against the collective effort to preserve a piece of property, becomes something you really feel. It's a remarkable sequence, one that I suspect was the inspiration for the end of The Shining and Once Upon A Time In America.
It's so fun, so light, so full of joy and community yet it chills your soul. Many films are moving and haunting and touching, but in a transient way that is easily brushed off. McCabe really pierces through your defences, shows you the wonder but also the misery. The terrible randomness of life has rarely been caught on camera with such force, and yet with such insouciance, and all of it presented to you in such pretty packaging.
The film doesn't have a soundtrack as such, just a few songs by Leonard Cohen. It works perfectly, even though there is no real connection between them and the film. Whenever there's a moment of peace you hear him huskily intoning about being some Joseph looking for a manger or reaching for the sky just to surrender. The implication is that life is the noise we make to cover up mournful droning of the Leonard Cohen album that is playing constantly in the background.
