Richard Altman's "McCabe & Mrs." Miller, 1971, is unknown by what wind entered my list for viewing, but looked, attracted the name of Altman, as well as the names of Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in the lead roles. The case takes place at the beginning of the last century, in 1902. In a small mining town, located near a Presbyterian church and therefore named after it, comes a certain John McCabe, who does not tell anything about himself, but begins by organizing first a gambling establishment, and then a small brothel, buying three prostitutes from a pimp in a nearby town for $ 200. After some time, Mrs. Miller comes to them - also a prostitute, but also a brothel owner with her "girls" and offers him cooperation. They say she will be engaged in a brothel, and he is a gambling establishment, the profits will be divided. He, of course, is still a businessman who does not even know how to understand elementary accounting documents, but agrees, moreover, is fond of Mrs. Miller, who is really quite attractive, but for sex, despite their kind of intimacy, she still takes money from him. Their joint business is flourishing, besides, he still hits hard, and she quietly smokes opium. Suddenly, two agents of a well-known mining company come to him, who offers him $5,000 for his property and possessions, but he, considering himself extremely cunning and intelligent, which he is not, refuses them in the hope of raising the price, they raise it a little, and then they leave, deciding to choose another way to deal with him, very common there, i.e. simply kill him. Mrs. Miller warns him of the danger, at first he spits on it with his inherent vanity and arrogance, and then, realizing the danger, begins to seek contact with that company, but the train has already left. Three murderers come to town and they must kill him. Events are becoming more dangerous and the end is expected, he is still killed, but he manages to deal with his killers. Meanwhile, Mrs. Miller finds comfort in opium in a Chinese drug den. Although the film belongs to the genre of westerns, and is among the best of them, it is still not quite a typical Western. Throughout the film, we hear songs by Leonard Cohen, which are very suitable both in sound and content. The actors play well too, Warren Beatty seems to me to be a good fit for the role, as did Julie Christie for her.
Anti-Western, received the title of the Great Western
Westerns were very popular in American cinema until the 1960s. But the stories about brave cowboys eventually outlived themselves and Westerns began to appear on the screens, in which the characters and the events taking place absolutely did not correspond to the classics of the genre. These westerns were called anti-Western or revisionist westerns. And one of the main such films is considered McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).
McCabe and Mrs. Miller tells a rather simple story. A town in the wild West, just beginning its development and numbering only about 100 inhabitants. There appears the main character of the film - McCabe (his role is played by Warren Beatty). He is known as the man who killed someone dangerous and even more famous. He's got money and he's here to build a business. A man buys prostitutes in a nearby town and starts building a bar and brothel.
Then comes Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie). She is a brothel worker herself and persistently offers her services to McCabe as the manager of a new brothel.
So a couple of main characters build a business and quickly succeed. But everything changes because of their success - there are representatives of a large company who make an offer. An offer that cannot be refused. And it's falling apart. . .
McCabe and Mrs. Miller was directed by Robert Altman, who became famous as the creator of the tragicomedies Military Field Hospital, Gosford Park, Short Editing, The Player, and others. And from the non-traditional genre of Western for this film, he took very little. His McCabe is neither in appearance nor in character like a brave and brave cowboy. His Mrs. Miller is a non-traditional Western character. She is businesslike, intelligent, independent and courageous, but at the same time broken and incapable of resisting those who are stronger than her.
'McCabe and Mrs Miller' is imbued with realism. The heroes here are not heroes at all, but ordinary living people. Conflicts here do not unfold in the square and to epic music. Events unfold quite chaotic and become the result of ordinary human mistakes and fleeting decisions, and not the result of evil fate and the realization of fate.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller is one of the greatest westerns in history. But of course, the modern viewer will find a lot of it strange, unsaid and extremely pessimistic. We take the phrase "Wild West" as a common name for the area. But the word “wild” did not appear here by accident. Westerns are stories of times when wild morals ruled. When the strong took by force everything they wanted. Anyone could be killed at any time without any consequences. Traditional Westerns romanticized the Wild West. But such films as McCabe and Mrs. Miller plunge the viewer into the mud and anarchy that actually made up the everyday life of the inhabitants of those places.
This film is the first of two Westerns directed by Robert Altman. According to many, he is also the best appeal of the director to this genre and some archetypes of American folk culture. Moreover, it is the archetypes – Altman here tries to reveal, to show what was at the heart of the most popular, along with the culture of comics, American myth – the heroic era of the Wild West. It seems to me that this is the main idea of the film, which, upon careful consideration, is able to reveal itself in its other guises. First of all, as one of the most romantic stories in world cinema.
“McCabe and Mrs. Miller” is the best way to analyze the directorial style of Robert Altman, because here are presented (even, perhaps in its best form) all or almost all of the favorite techniques of the director, which have become his hallmark. The most striking of these are, of course, picture experiments, which act as a kind of metatext, if you can use that word. In this case, the artificially aged sepia image, along with the music of Leonard Cohen, serves as a superstructure to the basic idea of archetypes; they - music and picture - as second-order elements emphasize the underlying theme of the film. It should also be said that these elements along the way literally “drive” the viewer into the narrative, working for the atmosphere. The next directorial touch that Altman often uses in his films is his famous manner of constructing the speech of the characters, when the lines are pronounced simultaneously, overlapping each other, or intentionally indistinct, so that only the tone of what is said is heard. This technique in all films plays a role - it plays to increase the perception of the realism of the work, which in itself, probably, cannot be uniquely characterized as a positive point, but in McCabe and Mrs. Miller it naturally enhances the execution of the main idea, so it fits perfectly into the overall canvas as a piece of a puzzle. Altman’s manner of filling his films with such “second-order elements”, which vividly highlight the director’s plan, turned out to be the most powerful and appropriate in this picture. The latter, however, may be a consequence of the brightness of the field on which the director plays – the rich national culture of America, the value of which is in vain to belittle.
Having done impressive work on the ideological content, Robert Altman did not forget about the plot. McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a romantic and tragic story that is interesting in its own right, apart from the brilliantly executed task of destroying the Western myth. The story of the cunning but charming John McCabe and the intelligent and cynical Constance Miller, trying to live as they can, without turning into monsters, touches, does not leave indifferent. This is facilitated by the almost brilliant play of the lead actor - Warren Beatty, who was also the initiator of many successful finds of the work. Not much inferior to the play of Julie Christie, who made the image of Mrs. Miller natural, but at the same time quite vivid. A string of supporting roles is also discharged very successfully, filling the world of McCabe and Mrs. Miller with life. Technical performance of the film in Hollywood is highly professional and makes you believe what is happening on the screen.
The combination of a fascinating story and a deep ideological background that does not look artificially, mechanically “glued together” (which sometimes sins Stanley Kubrick, for example), makes the film a work of art that works at different levels and for different viewers. It’s not just a story of love, not just a tragic portrait of people living in difficult times, but also not just a polemic with a classic western, and this layeredness, combined with integrity, perhaps makes McCabe and Mrs. Miller one of the best films ever made.
In the early seventies, filming a revisionist western, such outstanding directors as Sam Peckinpa, Arthur Penn and Robert Altman were able to prove themselves. For the latter, the first work shot in this shell, was the film “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971) – which differed from the classical representatives by the fact that the action took place not in the desert, dusty prairies, or on the border with hot Mexico, but in winter.
However, some producers replaced the hot valleys with snow before Altman. John Ford showed us some winter landscapes in his Seekers (1956), and Italian director Sergio Corbucci, for example, completely shot his spaghetti western The Great Silence (1968) in an ice town. But neither did what the creator of McCabe could achieve. And he, remaining true to himself, turned everything upside down, although he did not introduce the concept of revisionism into the American Western. Before him, this was done by the “undertaker of the genre” Pekingpah. However, the director of the most romantic snow western, wedged in this wave, did not become his imitator. Altman, like Arthur Penn, is a completely independent figure.
The main thing that the director bets on in this film is the atmosphere and mood, even their whole string. Romantic and melancholy, sometimes piercing and sad, and sometimes satirical - all this McCabe and Mrs. Miller is one of the most important representatives of the revisionist Western. In terms of creating an atmosphere, it is worth noting the wonderful music of Leonard Cohen, and of course, excellent camera work. Camera movements, panoramic shooting, fixation of intraframe space, abundant use of the transfocator - almost perfect and once again emphasize the Altman mood.
A lot of controversy was caused by the color of the picture - deliberately created the effect of an old photograph. This distinctive feature of the film already in the production stage became a stumbling block between Altman and the cameraman Wilmosh Zigmond. But, despite this, it is really difficult not to note the originality of the visual part, and not to give it credit. Such a picture works on the atmosphere, and this is perhaps the main thing for a film work, where the atmosphere is one of the fundamental ones.
Perfectly performed their roles Julie Christie, who appeared in the image of a prostitute Constance Miller, and Warren Beatty, who played the role of businessman John McCabe. The actor, previously known by the image of Clyde Barrow in the outstanding film Bonnie and Clyde (1967), being one of the producers of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, often came into conflict with Altman on the set.
A separate word deserves directorial skill. At the time, known only as the creator of various TV series and TV shows, a couple of past unnoticed films, as well as the instantly iconic "Warfield Hospital" (1970), Altman already demonstrates himself as a fully revealed phenomenon for American cinema. He manages to do the incredible - throughout the unhurried story of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, keep the tension, despite the original tragic mood of the picture. And it does it all the way to the final, which, by the way, is filled with suspense of the highest sample.
Somewhat controversially received in the year of release (although many immediately recognized the film as an important event in the history of the Western), over time, the film cemented the status of a masterpiece, becoming one of the most talented films shot in the 70s, and one of the best films of Robert Altman, whose extensive filmography is already rich in truly great works. However, it was McCabe and Mrs. Miller who remained a special exception for him, to the level he could not even approach in his next western, Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976).