One of Altman's very best
McCabe and Mrs. Miller, with Leonard Cohen's soundtrack, is absolutely one of the best movies ever from Robert Altman. Imaginative, great script, the talk-over breakthrough realism and, of course, the story line and the fabulous Julie Christie combine to make this one any movie lover should not miss.

Interesting, but not Altman's strongest.
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

I've never much gotten along with Robert Altman's movies, though I've found that with Altman, as with Kubrick, the farther back I go in the catalog, the better the movie tends to be. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule (Altman was thinking what, exactly, when he agreed to helm the adaptation of Popeye?), but in general, it holds. And while I don't seem to have found McCabe and Mrs. Miller the be-all and end-all of film as some people have, it was certainly an enjoyable romp, if discomfiting at times.

McCabe (Warren Beatty, in by far the best performance I've seen from him) is an entrepreneur with a shady past who arrives in a logging town one winter looking to set up a brothel. He is soon joined by Constance Miller (Julie Christie), a madam with a lot more business sense than McCabe has. The two of them, working together, quickly grow their business into the premier economic attraction in tiny Presbyterian Church, Washington. Unfortunately, as attractions will do, it attracts. And some of the folks it attracts are the wrong kinds of folks, who would like to have that business for themselves. McCabe's flighty idealism and Miller's hard-headed pragmatism clash, even in the face of a common enemy.

This is not your momma's western; if John Wayne hated High Noon, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall the first time he saw this! No hookers with a heart of gold here, no square-jawed heroes, none of the usual western clichés anywhere in sight. That by itself makes this an interesting movie, but Altman ups the ante with his directing ability, which was-- at least in the early seventies-- prodigious indeed (viz. M*A*S*H). This is a western that just kind of muddles through, for the most part, with a climax that's alternately amusing and horrifying (not necessarily because of the actions taking place, but because of the lack of every emotion we expect to see from both the good guys and the bad guys), some solid characters, and a few chuckles here and there. I liked it. ***

The Best of the Classics
For all of the HBO fans who loved, "Deadwood," you will also love McCabe and Mrs. Miller. You will see the seeds of the series that took too long to come to cable. This, as in Deadwood, shows the place in history of the great robber barons who ruled over the expansion of American industry and economics (kind of like the oil companies today). In this movie, you will see McCabe, a simple, uneducated man, forced into standing up against the establishment almost accidently. The way this story plays out, it ranks with some of the great Shakespearian tragedies.

Greatest Western--Altman's Masterpiece
Robert Altman's revision of America's most beloved genre, the Western, results in what is perhaps the greatest Western ever made, as well as becoming simultaneously Altman's masterpiece, one of the best films of the `70s, and one of the great American classics. Beatty and Christie both engage in the best acting performances of their careers in their character studies of the drunken dreamer McCabe whose pioneer attempts to create a free, independent town are thwarted by cruel corporate cold blood, and the shrewd and detached hooker Mrs. Miller who escapes from the harsh frontier life through her opium pipe. The most lyrical, poignant, and atmospheric tale of the American dream gone awry with an unforgettable ending in the winter wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

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