McCabe & Mrs Miller 4K

If we don’t mention a certain Robert Altman movie that begins with a “Q”, the director’s most pleasing films are those that work from within established genres. Call them ‘quirky experiments’ — they almost always appeal. 1971’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a fine addition to the roll call of revisionist westerns. It’s the first Altman movie with large sections directed to look like a free-form happening. It looked different, too. Altman’s collaboration with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond yielded a much-debated visual style: low contrast and flattened color through long Panavision lenses. What does 4K encoding do for Zsigmond’s ‘experimental’ images?

When new McCabe & Mrs. Miller was deemed something out of the mainstream, a risky proposition that flew only because of Altman’s big success with 1970’s M*A*S*H . It now plays like a dream project. Both Warren Beatty and Julie Christie wanted to work with the director. With some of his stock company acquired on M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud, Altman worked in a realistic frontier ‘set’ constructed in the Canadian woods, and came back with a wispy opium dream of a movie.

In 1902, the new town of Presbyterian Church is somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. John McCabe (Warren Beatty) becomes the tiny hamlet’s star businessman when he brings in the first prostitutes. The savvy madam Constance Miller (Julie Christie) then arrives, offering to run the business in a real house with some class and hygiene. Constance has a soft spot for her partner, but sees him as a gullible fool. The partners prosper until the agents of a regional cartel arrive to buy them out. McCabe doesn’t take the offer seriously, until Constance tells him that he has little choice in the matter, if he wants to live. But he can’t negotiate with the follow-up team, a trio of hired killers who laugh at his sudden willingness to sell. John seeks outside help, but the local lawyer (William Devane) urges him to hold his ground, and deal a symbolic blow for American entrepreneurial independence.

The visual surface of McCabe & Mrs. Miller was something new in 1971: all long lenses and shallow focus, following characters through the wooden shacks of Presbyterian Church as if spying on them from afar. Altman’s view is detached and selective; his actors behave as if they didn’t know we were watching. In many scenes, a couple of dozen people mill about and converse freely in what for any other director would have been a sound mixer’s nightmare.

Some scenes were multi-miked for audio: Altman would eventually employ tape decks meant for multi-track music recording. American Cinematographer wrote about the technique for Altman’s later movie California Split, in which Altman’s sound recordists laid down up to 24 discrete tracks. The dialogue could be mixed as a wall of chatter, with important words peeking through.

Altman embraces the cacophony, going for the overall mood and atmosphere of his group scenes. The card games in the saloon involve a lot of improvisation, and where the camera happens to be pointing at any particular moment is almost beside the point. We’re all eavesdroppers. The indistinct dialogue forces us to tune in or give up. We’re prompted to invest in the story and to decipher it for ourselves. The clever technique encourages audience involvement.

Altman also makes very artistic use of ’60s folksinger Leonard Cohen. The stylishly anachronistic songs fit in extremely well with the softly falling snow of the wild Northwest. The barely-melodic repetitious tunes are reassuring, and the bits of lyrics that filter through add a melancholy commentary. The images and audio generate a convincing snowbound feeling.

The New Age audiovisuals support an old tale of individualism vs. villainy, soured by Altman and co-writer Brian McKay’s cruel changes to familiar Western situations. Forget classic ideas of the West as a place of fairness and equality, of fresh starts. The town features a traditional church. Only when McCabe looks for sanctuary do we find that the church’s inside is an unfinished mess, with a madman for a preacher. The town’s population is said to be at least half Chinese, but they’re unwelcome in any of the white establishments. One of the most memorable speeches explains that the mine managers save money by having unsuspecting ‘Chinaman’ place the toughest explosive charges. The immigrants get blown up, but since the fine for killing a ‘chink’ is only $50 it’s much cheaper than doing it the slow way.

The show undercuts established notions of western heroism. McCabe is a smart talking, fast-dealing con man with a false reputation as a gunslinger. But his smarts don’t reach past his five favorite jokes and he can’t add numbers that aren’t on playing cards. He’s often too drunk to make a decent decision. At one point during a funeral in progress, John feels threatened by a lone stranger who appears at the edge of town. Clearly trying to impress his new business ‘partner’ Mrs. Miller, John readies his gun and marches nobly into a confrontation. The experienced Constance is not fooled.

McCabe puts on a good show for his yahoo customers, but he doesn’t realize his own gullibility. He buys the baloney of the lawyer who praises his ‘undefeatable frontier spirit of free enterprise.’ McCabe is less a noble warrior than a pimp and procurer. His main talent is that of a cheap club tout– he can sucker the local miners in to playing cards, and fire them up about the ‘high times’ to be had with his scruffy, miserable-looking prostitutes. The film’s honesty about such things is refreshing, especially after the smugly obscene ‘family values’ musical  Paint Your Wagon.

Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country may have given us our first look at a functioning house of ill repute in the old West. But Altman takes the subject much farther. Julie Christie’s Mrs. Miller is a transplanted streetwise Cockney who rejects the label of ‘lady.’ Constance talks the language of whoring without regard to propriety. She’s also keenly aware of the malice behind the big company’s buyout offer; she likely came to America to get free of similar criminal muscle in the London vice trade. If McCabe had the sense to forget his pride and trust her on an equal basis, his ability to bluff and her common sense might amount to something.

The McCabe/ Miller ‘romance’ is a clash of opposed temperaments. With Constance running the brothel John is left with little to do beyond louse up the books. When he comes back at night on a personal visit, she insists on cash on the table. John chafes against her clear superiority at doing almost everything, and then cries when trying to express his affection. Warren Beatty does some of his best work here, suppressing his boundless vanity for the sake of the character. Only once or twice does he lapses into a Clyde Barrow mannerism or line delivery.

Mrs. Miller shows no shame when she says plainly, “I’m a whore.”  She has retained her pride and her ambition, and a measure of tenderness. One of the best scenes shows Constance helping the panicky Ida Coyle (Shelley Duvall) prepare for her first experience as a prostitute. It’s a touching little drama. Constance has a soft spot for McCabe, but he isn’t the partner she seeks. Constance’s choice for personal pleasure is opium, which seems appropriate for a woman who sees sex as a day job. Julie Christie’s performance garnered an Oscar nomination. Her laughing, doped-up eyes, smiling at John from behind her bed sheet, are unforgettable. Did Constance’s opium dream take her to China, change her name to Elsa, and transform her into Rita Hayworth’s  Lady from Shanghai?

Altman doesn’t rush his story, being perfectly content to loiter with his two-dozen marginal characters and observe businsess as usual. But key moments employ familiar genre conventions. There’s even a spin on the Jack Palance– Elisha Cook Jr. killing in  Shane, when a hapless innocent gets plugged for little more than target practice. Altman’s victim is a sweetheart of a cowboy (Keith Carradine) who just wants some new socks; the killer is an immigrant Dutch Boy punk with a permanent mean expression. Eventually McCabetoo must observe a formal western ritual, when a showdown becomes unavoidable. When he takes on all three killers in a snowbound game of hide ‘n’ seek, we’re back in traditional genre ground.

Robert Altman fans admire his stock company of loyal actors. Michael Murphy had been in every Altman film starting with 1967’s  Countdown. From Brewster McCloud comes Bert Remsen, and of course Shelley Duvall. From M*A*S*H come John Schuck, Corey Fischer, and third-billed Rene Auberjonois. Most of these characters interact only tangentially with John and Constance, giving the impression of a solid storyline in the middle of random activity. One character, John’s construction foreman, interacts with McCabe much as did  M*A*S*H’s Radar O’Reilly.

Western heroes are eventually supposed to prove themselves through gunplay, and McCabe comes through a technical winner. One foe is easily ambushed, and another falls for an old trick. But the rattlesnake reflexes of the punk Dutch boy are too much for McCabe, who finds himself victorious only by body count. At the end, the snow and the music merge for one of the more satisfyingly resolved gunfights in post-heyday Westerns. The finale feels like a Jack London story and also reminds us of Robert Mitchum in William Wellman’s Track of the Cat.