"The story of a gambling man and a hustling lady and the empire they fashioned from the wilderness." This is McCabe & Mrs Miller. This revisionist Western film directed by Robert Altman, adapted by Altman and Brian McKay, and based on McCabe by Edmund Naughton. Charismatic gambler John McCabe arrives in a mining community and decides to open a brothel. The local residents are impressed by his confident demeanour and fast talk, but crafty prostitute Constance Miller sees through McCabe's words and realises he isn't as sharp as he seems. For a share in his profits, Mrs. Miller agrees to help plan and run McCabe's establishment, but soon a powerful company threatens to destroy what they have built up.
In 1968, producer David Foster had purchased the film rights to the novel; he'd learned of the novel while negotiating with Ellen Wright, the widow of novelist Richard Wright, over the rights to The Mandarins, a novel by Simone de Beauvoir. With his partner, Mitchell Broward, Foster then negotiated a deal with the Fox studio for two films. By October, 1968, Foster had commissioned a screenplay from Ben Maddow, a well-known poet and screenwriter. In 1969, during the post-production of M.A.S.H. (1970), Foster signed Altman to direct. They agreed to wait until the commercial success of M.A.S.H. to take the pitch for McCabe to a studio for funding. A second screenplay was commissioned from Brian McKay, who completed it in only five weeks. A revised version of that screenplay became the "shooting script" for the film. Altman offered the lead to Elliott Gould who turned it down to make I Love My Wife. While in England, Foster offered the role to Warren Beatty; Beatty flew to New York City to see M.A.S.H. and then flew to Los Angeles, California to accept the role. In mid October 1970, principal photography commenced, and was shot throughout British Columbia, Canada. Sets were built that were authentic to the period. Since the city of Vancouver generally receives a great deal of rain, the production ran buried hoses throughout the town, placed so they could create the appearance of rain. It was usually only necessary to turn on the hoses to make scenes shot on the rare days when it didn't rain, to match those shot on days when it did. Near the end of filming, it began snowing. Beatty did not want to start shooting in the snow, as it was in a sense dangerous to do so: to preserve continuity, the production would have to be shot in snow. Altman countered that since those were the only scenes left to film, it was best to start since there was nothing else to do. The heavy snow, with the exception of a few "fill-in" patches on the ground, was genuine; the crew members built snowmen and had snowball fights between takes. For a distinctive look, rather than manipulate the film in post-production, Altman and Zsigmond chose to "flash" (pre-fog) the film negative before its eventual exposure, as well as use a number of filters on the cameras; in this way the studio could not force him to change the film's look to something less distinctive.
Altman and the editor and second unit director, Lou Lombardo, spent nine months editing the film in North Vancouver, close to the location of the filming itself. The editing was an innovation in its time because the principal storyline about McCabe and Miller occupies relatively little of the film's running time, especially in the first half of the film. This aspect of the film's editing also carried through into the film's unusual sound editing, which can blend many conversations and noises and does not emphasise the principal characters. A fan of Leonard Cohen since Cohen's debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Altman had Lombardo use Cohen's music to maintain a rhythm for the film, in effect using it as a "temp" track. Since McCabe was a Warner Brothers film and Cohen's album was released through Columbia Records, Altman didn't expect to be able to procure rights for Cohen's music. He called Cohen, expecting to trade off his recent success with M.A.S.H., but found that Cohen had no knowledge of it. Instead, Cohen had loved Altman's less popular follow-up film Brewster McCloud (1970). In an unusual arrangement at the time, Cohen arranged for his record company to license the music cheaply, even writing into the contract that sales of that album after the release of the film would turn some of the royalties to Altman. The Stranger Song, Sisters of Mercy and Winter Lady were used for the film. They were released together on a 7-inch single in 1971. Initially, on watching the film, Cohen didn't like the film, but a year later he called Altman to apologise, saying he had seen the film again and loved it. Altman referred to it as an "anti-Western film" because the film ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions. Since its release, the film has received critical acclaim and has earned an Oscar nomination for Christie in the Best Actress category. The film was deemed the 8th greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in its AFI's 10 Top 10 list in 2008 and, in 2010, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."
The film stars Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, René Auberjonois, Michael Murphy, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Hugh Millais, and William Devane. The performances given by the cast were top-notch, inspiring, well-drawn and not at all glamourised as typical Hollywood Westerns.
While one of Altman's strongest films, this cynical tale merits a look as a meditation on American history and the American west. Altman and crew have done the necessary job in adapting McCabe and have created a terrific movie out of Naughton's novel of the Western frontier. The movie is full of intelligence and invention. It's Altman at his perverse best.
Simon says McCabe & Mrs Miller receives:
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