McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Composite Score: 84
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck, Corey Fischer, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, and Keith Carradine
Director: Robert Altman
Writers: Robert Altman and Brian McKay
Genres: Drama, Western
MPAA Rating: R
Box Office: $31,558 worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is the film adaptation of Edmund Naughton’s novel McCabe about a gambler and prostitute who go into business together in a mining town in the old Pacific Northwest. The film, adapted by director Robert Altman, is one of the early film examples of the grittier style of western, portraying the grime and depravity that was present in the Old West as something permeating society, not just characterizing its villains, presupposing such films as Unforgiven, The Hateful 8, or even the 2010 True Grit remake. The film (along with 1970’s M*A*S*H) helped establish Altman as a director to keep an eye on in cinema and also received an Oscar nomination for Julie Christie for Best Lead Actress for her portrayal of the titular Mrs. Miller. Hers and Beatty’s leading performances and the film’s willingness to stray from genre tropes have given it a place in the annals of film history.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
Because of its insistence on subverting most tropes that you could think to find in westerns, McCabe & Mrs. Miller has a bit of a lag from the end of its first act to the back half of its second. Where viewers might usually expect to find some classic womanizing, gambling, drinking, and villain introductions, we instead get the local politics of building and operating a saloon and brothel in a small mining town named after a church. Most of the tension (what little there is) is built through glances and passings in the street as the film slows to a snail’s pace until the big company comes to buy the town out at the end of the second act. The implied relationship between McCabe and Mrs. Miller that forms the basis for the impact of the film’s final sequence feels very shoehorned after this stretch of story where the only real interaction the audience sees between the two is comparing numbers and going off on each other about business disruptions. There’s no real tension – sexual, romantic, or otherwise – until we’re already getting to the film’s climax, leaving the plot feeling a bit off in terms of its pacing.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
The subversion of McCabe & Mrs. Miller might hamper its pacing to some extent, but the overall effect of a western that centers on a cowardly gambler and his prostitute business partner is one of surprising impact. The final act of the film, building to the showdown between McCabe and the representatives of the Harrison Shaughnessy Mining Company, is a lesson in tension from the moment the legal team arrives on the scene to the final eruption of violence across the town of Presbyterian Church. The revelations of McCabe’s less than bona fide credentials and Mrs. Miller’s opium addiction only serve to increase the effectiveness of this tension building – crumbling the false foundation that the audience has built under the story and leading them to doubt any positive outcome at all. It’s brilliantly done and makes for a satisfying conclusion even if the rest of the story might have dragged a bit at points.
I do also want to applaud both Beatty and Christie for their performances in this film, carrying it on their shoulders as the two leads to a place that ends up working thanks to the film’s skillful writing. Beatty plays McCabe as cool enough to be a believable western hero, albeit with very little to back up his swagger beyond the rumors muttered by the townsfolk, and his turn to dedicated but foolish businessman by the film’s conclusion feels only proper, thanks to Beatty’s increasingly buffoonish portrayal of the film’s male lead. Similarly, Christie’s portrayal of Mrs. Miller’s hard and no-nonsense exterior that hides her more romantic (and also drug-addicted) underside is brilliantly done, earning a quality Oscar nomination in the process. She manages to draw sympathy and derision in equal parts from the audience as their story unfolds, perfect for the subversive nature of the film.
Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a highly effective darker take on the western genre, headed by two strong performances from Warren Beatty and Julie Christie that make it into the great film that it is. Its occasionally slow story does pay off in the end if you are willing to stick with it, resulting in a solid catharsis by the film’s end. It is currently available to rent on most streaming services for those interested in watching it.
