McCabe & Mrs. Miller 1971

'McCabe & Mrs. Miller.' Anti-western? Modern western? I think Robert Altman's film is the first realistic western.

Robert Altman described McCabe & Mrs. Miller as an “anti-western.” I think Altman directed what was the first realistic western. Altman’s 1971 film, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in the title roles, blazed the western trail for more naturalistic takes on the genre. Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner’s, and television’s Deadwood, for example.

'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' was filmed in Vancouver, BC, standing in for the Pacific Northwest.

I’m not a big western fan. And while I admire Robert Altman, I think his work is hit or miss. I was therefore surprised by how moved I was by McCabe & Mrs. Miller. While McCabe got many great reviews when it was released, there were naysayers who dismissed it as artsy, rambling, and difficult to follow. Watching McCabe for the first time recently, I admired the simple but strong story, natural acting, stunning photography, and lovely soundtrack. Guided by Altman, McCabe & Mrs. Miller comes together gracefully as one of the best films of the ‘70s.

Warren Beatty as John McCabe, a gambler and would-be businessman.

Robert Altman received a mixed blessing, making his biggest hit, MASH, near the beginning of his feature film career. On the one hand, it gave Altman some long-desired Hollywood leverage. It also put a price on the director’s head, to repeat his surprise commercial success. Altman was never a mainstream filmmaker: there were few commercial hits in his career, a number of critically acclaimed films, and a lot of flops.

Julie Christie as Constance Miller, a madam brought in by McCabe to bring business up to snuff.

Robert Altman’s background as a television director points out the duality of both his career and nature. Though Altman was highly paid and helmed some of TV’s top series of the ‘60s, he despised the constraints of formula storytelling. Ironically, after directing many western and detective shows, Altman revisited these genres with his revisionist takes in the ‘70s, in McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye.

Michael Murphy, left, as the mining company front man, trying to strike a deal with mush-mouthed McCabe.

The western, a staple in both movies and TV by the ‘50s, usually featured indoor sets mixed with pretty location shooting, quaintly lavish frontier homes, one-dimensional heroes and villains, pioneer women with puffy hair and mid-century makeup, and blue-eyed Indians, who were either noble or savage. After directing the prettied up old west on TV, with everything black and white, even when the show was in color—McCabe & Mrs. Miller was Altman’s answer to the Hollywood western. *Spoiler alert: plot points divulged ahead...*

McCabe & Mrs. Miller was probably the way the west really was. However, this is not a documentary. Altman brings his tart but heartfelt take to the film. Whenever I think of directors like Robert Altman or Billy Wilder, I think of the line that a cynic is the ultimate romantic.

Julie Christie as Mrs. Miller, on the set with director Robert Altman.

The actual plot is pretty simple. Gambler and wheeler-dealer John McCabe comes Presbyterian Church, a small mining town in the Pacific Northwest. He sees opportunity, but bumbles at attempts to start a whorehouse. McCabe decides a woman’s touch is needed on the business side as well, and brings in Constance Miller. The no-nonsense whore-turned-madam urges the gambler to go big, and pretty soon their business and the community are thriving. The underdogs are soon paid a visit by the big dogs, a mining company who wants to buy up Presbyterian Church—which includes McCabe & Co. Though the visiting company men are clear that it’s an offer he can’t refuse, but McCabe foolishly does, and the next visit is from hired killers.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that Altman didn’t give any credit to Edmund Naughton, author of the novel McCabe. Just as Bob denigrated the novel MASH, Altman described McCabe as conventional. Not true, the 1959 novel presents the story and characters much in the same anti-heroic way. Altman’s attitude is typical of most Hollywood folk. To share creative credit might detract from their worth, both artistically and financially. Hitchcock was notoriously stingy in giving writers credit or compensation. The director liked the myth that he took a cliché dime store novel and turned it on its ear—iconoclast Altman may have been a bit more “Hollywood” than he cared to admit.

Hugh Millais as the chilling, charming hired gun Butler. Coincidence that he looks a great deal like director Robert Altman?

An Altman aside: Have any other viewers of McCabe & Mrs. Miller noticed that hired assassin Butler looks uncannily like director Altman? I wonder if Bob was having ironic fun, or if it was unconscious casting on his part.

Altman had been listening to 1967’s The Songs of Leonard Cohen and realized how influenced he was by the music when creating McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The three songs used—“The Stranger Song,” “Sisters of Mercy,” and “Winter Lady,”—are so intertwined with McCabe & Mrs. Miller that they are crucial to the film’s poetic quality. The songs are beautiful and haunting in their own right, but are indelible in this haunting story.

'The Kid' may look like the boy off the old paint can logo, but his tricking The Cowboy to draw is a dramatic moment.

Altman added his take on life in the old west: The Cowboy is gunned down by The Kid for no reason; the mail order bride’s groom gets beaten to death in a brawl when another man mistakes her for a prostitute; the bride, by necessity, then goes from new widow to prostitute; or when the “hero” McCabe fights off the hired assassins, the “heroine” Miller is drifting off at the opium den. This is where Altman shines, tweaking the already non-traditional western tropes of McCabe, and making them more realistic, random, and tragic. For instance, in the novel, hired killer Butler has a history with McCabe. In the film, he’s just a stranger doing his job.

The climatic gunfight in 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' had an unexpected co-star: snow!

The set piece is a long, climatic scene as McCabe fights off three killers, and the townspeople don’t even notice, as they are distracted when town’s namesake, the Presbyterian Church, catches fire. McCabe arduously, awkwardly fights off and kills all three gunmen, but their bullets to him have taken its toll. The hapless hero collapses in the snow, next to a building. Finally, you see Mrs. Miller, lying on a bunk in Chinatown, getting high. That last scene, with an extreme close up of a dreamy Christie, with Leonard Cohen singing her theme song, made me tear up the first time I watched McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

The snow in the gunfight scene is real, by the way. McCabe & Mrs. Miller was filmed in sequence, highly unusual in movie-making, and it began to snow during this climatic set piece, which took nine days to film. Altman loved spontaneous events like this and his longtime associate Joan Tewkesbury felt that it added a great deal, saying it was like watching wild animals track each other down.  

The painterly cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond gives 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' a dream-like quality.

Altman was sly at subtly slipping in commentary, like the Indians who leave Presbyterian Church as it gets overrun with white settlers. Or the lone black couple who silently but knowingly observe the changes that taking place. Altman makes a powerful statement without preaching about the big money men who come to town to buy out or kill the small time settlers.

One of Altman’s favorite techniques was overlapping dialogue, which he is often credited for creating. While the director embraced the device most realistically, Howard Hawks started it decades ago, especially his comedies, most famously in His Girl Friday. The other stylistic device noticeable in McCabe is the visual quality. Altman and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond “flashed” the negative: this under-exposed the film to give it a hazy look. Zsigmond aptly called McCabe & Mrs. Miller “a beautiful pipe dream.” Zsigmond’s cinematography is remarkable, conveying Altman’s vision, with the use of natural light. Vilmos Zsigmond also did memorable work in Deliverance, The Deer Hunter, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Warren Beatty as John McCabe. Beatty gives one of his best performances as the anti-hero in this modern western.

Warren Beatty, with only actor status in McCabe, was still was “hands-on” and questioned Altman about every aspect of the film. Beatty later told an Altman biographer that he didn’t understand why Bob would want to alter the negative, without the option of changing it back. Perhaps Beatty forgot that just several years earlier, the same studio—Warner Brothers—hated veteran director John Huston’s “sepia toned” version of Reflections in a Golden Eye. After a week in release, WB declared audiences were alienated by Huston’s vision, and put Reflections back out in Technicolor, where it flopped again. Altman knew that the studio hated his dreamlike cinematography and overlapping dialogue, and wasn’t going to give them a chance to meddle in post-production. Interestingly, Beatty recalled that Huston later told him McCabe & Mrs. Miller was the best western he’d ever seen.

As an actor, Warren Beatty often comes across as diffident and distracted, like he doesn’t understand why he’s standing in front of a camera. Well, these affectations work perfectly for John McCabe, a man who seems to enjoy befuddling people, to keep them at a distance. Later, as McCabe lets his guard down and admits his feelings for Mrs. Miller, first to himself—then to her—is some of Beatty’s best work. The latter scene, Beatty turned away from Christie, with McCabe plaintively telling Constance all he ever tried to do was put a smile on her face, is touching. It’s also admirable that Warren went along with playing a man who is in over his head and not the standard hero.

Beatty's John McCabe is all washed up after a fateful meeting with mining company big wigs.

For the amount of media attention spent on Warren Beatty, he has one of the most curious careers of any Hollywood leading man. As of 2018, Beatty’s been in show business for over 60 years. Yet, he’s appeared in just under two dozen films. Only 7 have made it over the 100 million dollar mark (adjusted for inflation). Warren’s output is a mix of art house cinema, formula flicks, long-gestated pet projects, and the few classics that his reputation rests upon. During the ‘60s, Beatty’s debut decade, Warren hit twice: his first, Splendor in the Grass and last, Bonnie and Clyde. In the mix was Beatty as an Italian gigolo in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone; a sex comedy with Leslie Caron aptly called Promise Her Anything; and a gambler romancing the world’s shortest showgirl, Liz Taylor, in The Only Game in Town. Game took so long to make back in ‘68, that it wasn’t released until 1970.

The ‘70s brought seven Beatty movies. Again, only two were hits: Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait. But there was the critically acclaimed The Parallax View and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Unfortunately, there was also 1975’s mega-flop The Fortune, an alleged comedy with Beatty and showbiz’ other big playboy, Jack Nicholson. The movie failed so badly that director Mike Nichols took a sabbatical from film-making until 1983’s Silkwood.

In the ‘80s, all Beatty begat was Reds and Ishtar—how’s that for a combo? Warren started the ‘90s with a bang, with cops and robbers Dick Tracy and Bugsy, followed by a forgettable remake of An Affair to Remember, and the sharp satire Bulworth at the end. Since then, Warren Beatty has only made two films in the new millennium; the latest was 2017’s D.O.A. Howard Hughes comedy, Rules Don’t Apply.

Julie Christie as Mrs. Miller. For most of the film, the only time the madam lets down her guard is when she's high.

Julie Christie was never a prolific actor, either. After a couple of breakthrough roles, Christie won her first Oscar for 1965’s Darling. Then Christie was Lara in Doctor Zhivago, the biggest hit of her career. Between Julie’s swift ascent as the “It” bird of British Cinema and Zhivago, the ‘60s version of Gone with the Wind, Christie became content with appearing in smaller films. Despite the major talent involved, the only Oscar nomination McCabe & Mrs. Miller received was for Julie Christie as Best Actress.

The heartbreaking end of 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller,' with McCabe dead in the snow & Mrs. Miller escaping to the opium den.

Julie Christie as Constance Miller is marvelous, as always. Christie always shines on the screen, and she’s a brisk presence as the no-nonsense madam of a whorehouse. Yet, she breaks your heart later, when you find out that behind that image is a haunted woman who is an opium addict. Again, Altman’s love of ambiguity intrigues audiences. Why does this seemingly strong woman need drugs? Why does she look so sad when she’s alone? Her past is vague. Is it to keep the harsh realities of life in the old west at bay? Has she been hurt before? We never know why Mrs. Miller keeps McCabe at arm’s length—even charging him for her favors, money on the dresser first. Is it because she’s got his number, and knows that he’s headed for trouble? Altman has a magnificent actress in Julie Christie, whose face effortlessly conveys all the emotions, with little dialogue.

Shelley Duvall as Ida, the mail-order bride, in her second feature film. The first was Altman's 'Brewster McCloud.'

McCabe & Mrs. Miller’s great cast is the start of Robert Altman’s repertory group. This includes Shelley Duvall as Ida the mail order bride—her debut was Altman’s prior Brewster McCloud. Keith Carradine made his film debut in ’71, as McCabe’s The Cowboy and as a gunfighter in A Gun Fight with Gregory Peck and Johnny Cash.  Rene Auberjonois is great as Sheehan, McCabe’s admiring and envious fellow business man. Michael Murphy is Sears, one of the company men who try to buy out McCabe. Hugh Millais is chilling as the killer, Butler, all menacing charm. A fresh face: Manfred Schulz in his only film as The Kid, a cold-blooded killer with a Dutch boy bob.

Keith Carradine as The Cowboy. The actor made his debut her and in 'A Gun Fight' with Gregory Peck and Johnny Cash.

Much has been written about Robert Altman’s methods in the making of this film, as it was truly ‘70s inspired. Bob had a huge selection of costumes brought in and let the actors choose their characters’ clothes. Altman encouraged cast and crew to live on the set, which was real houses and buildings, not just the typical false fronts. Crew members were also extras, depicting the construction of Presbyterian Church, with tools of the time. Actors were encouraged to improvise; the entire film was shot on location, in sequence.

Even though Altman strives for authenticity, I think Altman makes an allusion to the hippie culture happening to the old west. During Altman’s era, it was very chic to live back for actors and musicians to live “back to nature,” and I think McCabe picks up on this vibe.  Also, Mrs. Miller goes from an alcoholic in the book to drug addict on film, furthering the comparison. The building of the film’s mining town feels like a communal atmosphere rather than a typical old west town.

What’s sad about watching McCabe & Mrs. Miller is realizing how life in poverty-stricken or rural areas is still hard today for poor or powerless people. And they still turn to drugs and alcohol to dull the pain. The sudden, random violence in the movie reminds me of the sometimes shocking events in small town life, where people take each other’s or their own lives. McCabe & Mrs. Miller may be the first modern western, but the themes of life’s harsh realities and loneliness are timeless.

A beautiful pipe dream, in every sense.