Warren Beatty and Julie Christie help Robert Altman fashion one of his best pictures, a story of the Building of the West that meanders off in its own revisionist direction. The West, sayeth Altman, is just the evils of the East transplanted into the wilderness, a massive property grab. The free-form direction and cluttered soundtrack is a new look for the genre — the Oregon town is a dreamy mix of snowflakes, opium and the music of Leonard Cohen. And it’s now been remastered in 4K Ultra HD.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 827
1971 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 121 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 6, 2024 / 39.96
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Antony Holland, Manfred Schulz, Robert Fortier, Joan (Tewksbury).
Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond
Production Designer: Leon Ericksen
Art Directors: Al Locatelli, Philip Thomas
Film Editor and Second Unit Director: Louis Lombardo
Original Music: Leonard Cohen
Screenplay by Robert Altman, Brian McKay from the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton
Produced by Mitchell Brower, David Foster
Directed by Robert Altman

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 its 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.

The Criterion Collection’s 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a 4K digital restoration, with the feature presented in both formats. The extras are all on the Blu-ray disc.

The film’s look has been controversial from day one. Just two years earlier Vilmos Zsigmond was shooting exploitation for Al Adamson. Altman encouraged him to go radical with the look for this rain-soaked and snow-bound western. Zsigmond pre-flashed (or pre-fogged) his film stock, cutting down on contrast but raising the the ASA to obtain better exposures under low light. The interiors have a gritty realism not before seen — the exterior woods look lush, but not ‘Kodachrome pretty.’ Some colors are subdued. Even when printed in Technicolor, additional grain was visible. Most criticized was the absence of dark blacks. It’s technically a degraded image, but it gave Altman the new look he wanted, expressing the cold and misery of the rain-soaked frontier town.

New colorization tools could likely make Altman’s movie look as picture-pretty as a Disney comedy. The new encoding retains Vilmos Zsigmond’s visual choices, choosing not to ‘optimize’ the image. Criterion already did just that with their disc of another Zsigmond-shot western, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. The director was allowed to revise his film, making editiorial changes and abandoning Zsigmond’s nearly monochromatic original color timing. The irony is that the ‘pretty’ Heaven’s Gate is a heck of a lot easier on the eyes.

The New Hollywood of the 1970s embraced Altman & Zsigmond’s experimentation, even accepting the constant use of zoom lenses that flatten the image even more. Just we’re getting accustomed to the muddy murk and the darkened rooms, the snow arrives to cover everything we see with a claustrophobic, frigid beauty. Also looking appropriately dreamy are are Constance Miller’s blissed-out opium reveries. 4K brings the image to full resolution, avoiding the mush of older videos.

In 1971 multi-channel sound only existed for 70mm. The disc retains the movie’s sophisticated sound mix. A lot of the dialogue is treated almost as sound-effect walla, and we appreciate the subtitles that assure us that we aren’t missing anything. We’re still impressed at how well the Leonard Cohen songs set the mood.

The excellent extras package has not been changed since the first Blu-ray from 2016. An interview piece Way Out On a Limb gathers several key Altman collaborators. Assistant director Graeme Clifford also served as casting director. ‘Observer’ Joan Tewksbury was recruited to serve as script supervisor, and also play one of the prostitutes. Actor Rene Auberjonois remembers that the film’s first title was ‘The Presbyterian Church Wager.’ He was originally to play the minister but the change was good because he had already been the Padre in M*AS*H. Actor Michael Murphy remembers being asked to drive Altman’s car up to Vancouver. Keith Carradine says that Altman’s process for casting was an attempt to perceive the essence in an actor.

A pleasant 36-minute critical conversation between Carrie Beauchamp and Rick Jewell pegs the film as both revisionist and traditional. They note that Robert Altman was really beginning a second career, after 15 years in the Hollywood TV trenches. He wanted badly to break away and find his own style.

The older audio commentary pairs Altman with producer David Foster, who says that many of the set builders on location in British Columbia were U.S. draft evaders. From 1999 comes a 40-minute excerpt of Leon Erickson and art director Al Locatelli talking about McCabe at the Art Director’s Guild. Vilmos Zsigmond is featured in an excellent 2005 interview. He talks about coming to America with Laszlo Kovacs; the directors he met all wanted different-looking movies, and he made his name obliging their requests.

Excerpts are offered from two separate 1971 Dick Cavett TV shows. On the first, guest Pauline Kael defends the movie, which wasn’t doing well at the box office. Dick Cavett cheerfully reads from her sneering review of Tora! Tora! Tora!  Kael says that Hollywood needs to go in new directions like that wonderful young man Robert Altman. The second Cavett excerpt has Robert Altman himself. Cavett says that some of the critics were negative because they didn’t like the sound track. For the next ten years Pauline Kael would shower Altman with critical praise, sometimes deserved, sometimes not. She once reviewed an Altman film positively before it was even finished.

A ten-minute 1971 featurette has pompous narration spoken by Andrew Duggan. Much better is an original trailer that consists solely of Leonard Cohen music over a montage of scenes, without dialogue. The movie looks appropriately romantic and dreamy.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

McCabe & Mrs. Miller 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent (accurate to the film’s original appearance)
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary from 2002 featuring director Robert Altman and producer David Foster
Making-of interview talk with members of the cast and crew
Conversation with film historians Cari Beauchamp and Rick Jewell
1970 promotional featurette
Art Directors Guild Film Society Q&A from 1999 with production designer Leon Ericksen
Excerpts from archival interviews with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
Still Gallery by on-set photographer Steve Schapiro
Excerpts from two 1971 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Altman and film critic Pauline Kael
Trailer
Insert folder with an essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD disc + one Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: February 29, 2024
(7087mill)

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