The Long Goodbye (1973, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Raymond Chandler. That means that it’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Philip Marlowe Films
Murder, My Sweet (1944, dir by Edward Dmytryk, DP: Harry J. Wild)
The Big Sleep (1946, dir by Howard Hawks, DP: Sidney Hickox)
The Long Goodbye (1973, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Vilmos Zsgimond)
The Big Sleep (1978, dir by Michael Winner, DP: Robert Payner)
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we pay tribute to the legendary cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond. Born 90 years ago today in Hungary, Zsigmond got his start in the 60s with low-budget films like The Sadist but he went on to become one of the most in-demand cinematographers around. In fact, of all the people who started their career working on a film that starred Arch Hall, Jr., it’s hard to think of any who went on to have the type of success that Zsigmond did.
Zsigmond won one Oscar, for his work on Close Encounters of Third Kind. He was nominated for three more. He also received a BAFTA award for his work on The Deer Hunter and was nominated for an Emmy for his work on Stalin. He’s considered to be one of the most influential cinematographers of all time.
In honor of the legacy of Vilmos Zsigmond, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Films
Deliverance (1972, directed by John Boorman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
The Long Goodbye (1973, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, dir by Steven Spielberg, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Heaven’s Gate (1980, directed by Michael Cimino, DP: Vilmos Zsigmond)
Opening with a swarm of helicopters spaying for medflies and ending with an earthquake, 1993’s Short Cuts is a film about life in Los Angeles.
An ensemble piece, it follows several different characters as they go through their own personal dramas. Some of them are married and some of them are destined to be forever single but they’re all living in varying states of desperation. Occasionally, the actions of one character will effect the actions of another character in a different story but, for the most part, Short Cuts is a portrait of people who are connected only by the fact that they all live in the same city. There are 22 principal characters in Short Cuts and each one thinks that they are the star of the story.
Jerry Kaiser (Chris Penn) cleans the pools of rich people while, at home, his wife, Lois (Jennifer Jason Leigh), takes care of their baby and works as a phone sex operator. Jerry’s best friend is a makeup artist named Bill (Robert Downey, Jr.) who enjoys making his wife, Honey (Lili Taylor), looks like a corpse so that he can take her picture. One of her photographs is seen by a fisherman (Buck Henry) who has already discovered one actual corpse that weekend. He and his buddies, Vern (Huey Lewis) and Stuart (Fred Ward), discovered a dead girl floating in a river and didn’t report it until after they were finished fishing. (The sight of Vern unknowingly pissing on the dead body is one of the strongest in director Robert Altman’s filmography.)
Stuart’s wife, Claire (Anne Archer), is haunted by Stuart’s delay in reporting the dead body. A chance meeting Dr. Ralph Wyman (Matthew Modine) and his wife, artist Marian (Julianne Moore), leads to an awkward dinner between the two couples. Claire works as a professional clown and Ralph ends up wearing her clown makeup while his marriage falls apart.
Earlier, Claire was stopped and hit on by a smarmy policeman named Gene Shepard (Tim Robbins), who just happens to be married to Marian’s sister, Sherri (Madeleine Stowe). Gene is already having an affair with Betty Weathers (Frances McDormand), the wife of a helicopter pilot named Stormy (Peter Gallagher). When Stormy discovers that Betty has been cheating, he takes a creative revenge on her house.
Doreen Pigott (Lily Tomlin) lives in a trailer park with her alcoholic husband, Earl (Tom Waits). Driving home from her waitressing job, Doreen hits a young boy. The boy says he’s okay but when he gets home, he passes out. His parents, news anchorman Howard Finnegan (Bruce Davison) and his wife, Anne (Andie MacDowell), rush him to the hospital, where his doctor is Ralph Wyman. As Howard waits for his son to wake up, he has a revealing conversation with his long-estranged father (Jack Lemmon, showing up for one scene and delivering an amazing monologue). Meanwhile, a baker named Andy (Lyle Lovett) repeatedly calls the Finnegan household, wanting to know when they’re going to pick up their son’s birthday cake.
Based on the short stories of Raymond Carver and directed by Robert Altman, Short Cuts can sometimes feel like a spiritual descendent of Altman’s Nashville. The difference between this film and Nashville is that Short Cuts doesn’t have the previous film’s satiric bite. As good as Nashville is, it’s a film that can be rather snarky towards it character and the town in which it is set. Nashville is used as a metaphor for America coming apart at the seams. Short Cuts, on the other hand, is a far more humanistic film, featuring characters who are flawed but, with a few very notable exceptions, well-intentioned. If Nashville seem to be a portrait of a society on the verge of collapse, Short Cuts is a film about how that society ended up surviving.
It’s not a perfect film. There’s an entire storyline featuring Annie Ross and Lori Singer that I didn’t talk about because I just found it to be annoying to waste much time with. (The Ross/Singer storyline was the only one not to be based on a Carver short story.) The conclusion of Chris Penn’s storyline wasn’t quite as shocking as it was obviously meant to be. But, flaws and all, Altman and Carver’s portrait of humanity does hold our attention and it leaves us thinking about connections made and sometimes lost. Seen today, Short Cuts is a portrait of life before social media and iPhones and before humanity started living online. It’s a time capsule of a world that once was.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, let’s celebrate the year 1970! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 1970 Films
MASH (1970, dir by Robert Altman, DP: Harold E. Stine)
El Topo (1970, dir by Alejandro Jodorowsky, DP: Rafael Corkidi)
Nightmares Come At Night (1970, dir by Jess Franco)
Little Big Man (1970, dir by Arthur Penn, DP: Harry Stradling Jr)
1992’s The Player tells the story of Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins).
It’s not easy being Griffin Mill. From the outside, of course, it looks like he has the perfect life. He’s a studio executive with a nice house in Hollywood. He’s young. He’s up-and-coming. Some people, especially Griffin, suspect that he’ll be the president of the studio some day. By day, he sits in his office and listens to pitches from respected screenwriters like Buck Henry. (Henry has a great idea for The Graduate II!) During the afternoon, he might attends dailies and watch endless takes of actors like Scott Glenn and Lily Tomlin arguing with each other. Or he might go to lunch and take a minute to say hello to Burt Reynolds. (“Asshole,” Burt says as Griffin walks away.) At night, he might go to a nice party in a big mansion and mingle with actors who are both young and old. He might even run into and share some sharp words with Malcolm McDowell.
But Griffin’s life isn’t as easy as it seems. He’s constantly worried about his position in the studio, knowing that one box office failure could end his career. He fears that a new executive named Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) is after his job. Two new screenwriters (Richard E. Grant and Dean Stockwell) keep bugging him to produce their downbeat, no-stars anti-capitol punishment film. His girlfriend (Cynthia Stevenson) wants to make good movies that mean something. Even worse, someone is sending Griffin threatening notes.
It doesn’t take long for Griffin to decide that the notes are coming from a screenwriter named Dave Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio). Griffin’s attempt to arrange a meeting with Dave at a bar so that Griffin can offer him a production deal instead leads to Griffin murdering Dave in a parking lot. While the other writers in Hollywood mourn Dave’s death, Griffin starts a relationship with Dave’s artist girlfriend (Great Scacchi) and tried to hide his guilt from two investigating detectives (Whoopi Goldberg and Lyle Lovett). Worst of all, the notes keep coming. The writer, whomever they may be, is now not only threatening Griffin but also seems to know what Griffin did.
After spend more than a decade in the industry wilderness, Robert Altman made a critical and commercial comeback with The Player. It’s a satire of Hollywood but it’s also a celebration of the film industry, featuring 60 celebrities cameoing as themselves. Everyone, it seems, wanted to appear in a movie that portrayed studio execs as being sociopathic and screenwriters as being whiny and kind of annoying. The Player both loves and ridicules Hollywood and the often anonymous men who run the industry. Largely motivated by greed and self-preservation, Griffin may not love movies but he certainly loves controlling what the public sees. In the end, only one character in The Player sticks to her values and her ideals and, by the end of the movie, she’s out of a job. At the same time, Griffin has a social life that those in the audience can’t help but envy. He can’t step out of his office without running into someone famous.
The Player is one Altman’s most entertaining films, with the camera continually tracking from one location to another and giving as a vision of Hollywood that feels very much alive. Tim Robbins gives one of his best performances as Griffin Mill and Altman surrounds him with a great supporting cast. I especially liked Fred Ward as the studio’s head of security. With The Player, Altman mixes melodrama with a sharp and sometimes bizarre comedy, with dialogue so snappy that the film is as much a joy to listen to as to watch. That said, the real attraction of the film is spotting all of the celebrity cameos. (That and cheering when Bruce Willis saves Julia Roberts from certain death.) Altman was a director who often used his films to explore eccentric communities. With The Player, he opened up his own home.
In the 1980s, director Robert Altman found himself even more outside of the Hollywood system than usual. A series of films that confused critics and repelled audiences had led to Altman becoming something of a pariah. As no studio was willing to give Altman a chance to make the type of quirky feature films that he made his name with in the 70s, Altman instead directed a series of low-budget theatrical adaptations. These films may not have gotten the attention of his earlier films but they allowed Altman to show off his talents, especially when it came to working with actors.
1988’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was one of those films. Made for television and based on the play by Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was a courtroom drama that Altman brought to life with his usual flair. Anyone who has read either the play or Herman Wouk’s original novel (or who has seen the 1953 film version, The Caine Mutiny) will know the story. In the final days of World War II, Lt. Steven Maryk (Jeff Daniels) has been court-martialed for mutiny. During a particularly violent storm, Maryk took command of the USS Caine away from Lt. Commander Queeg (Brad Davis). Maryk and his fellow officers, including aspiring novelist Lt. Thomas Keefer (Kevin J. O’Connor), claim that, after several incidents that indicated he was mentally unstable, Queeg froze up on the bridge and had to be relieved of command. Queeg claims that everything he did was to enforce discipline on the ship and that he never froze. Prosecuting Maryk is Lt. Commander John Challee (Peter Gallagher). Defending him is Lt. Barney Greenwald (Eric Bogosian), who is determined to win the case even though he doesn’t necessarily agree with Maryk’s actions.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is very much a filmed play. Almost all of the action takes place in one location, a gymnasium that has been converted into a court of military law. We don’t actually see what happened on the Caine when Maryk took control. Instead, we just hear the testimony of those involved. Queeg defends himself, ably at first but soon he starts to show signs of the pressure of being in command. Maryk explains his actions and we want to believe him because he’s played by fresh-faced Jeff Daniels but, at the same time, there’s something a little bit too smug about his declaration that Queeg was not fit for command. The other officers on the Caine testify. Under Greenwald’s skillful cross-examination, Queeg is continually portrayed as being a flawed officer. But only Greenwald understand that Queeg was isolated not only by the loneliness of being in charge but also by members so his own crew, like Keefer, who hated the Navy and didn’t want to take their part in the war effort seriously. As a Jew who is very much aware of what’s at stake in the war, Greenwald has mixed feelings about the way that Queeg was treated. It ends with a party, where a drunk Greenwald calls out the true architect of The Caine Mutiny. As opposed to the way the scene was portrayed in the 1953 film or in Willam Friedkin’s recent adaptation), Altman focuses not so much on Greenwald but on the party occurring around him. If the other versions of this story ended on a note of triumph for Greenwald, this one ends on a note of sadness with Greenwald’s words being almost unheard by the officers of the Caine.
Altman gets excellent performances from the entire cast and, even more importantly, he avoids the downfall of so many other theatrical adaptations. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial may be a talky film and it may largely take place in only one location but it’s never boring. Altman’s camera is continually prowling around the makeshift courtroom, reflecting the tension of the case in every movement. The end result is one of Altman’s best theatrical adaptations.
Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one. Popeye got such bad reviews and was considered to be such a box office disappointment that director Robert Altman didn’t make another major film for a decade. Producer Robert Evans, who was inspired to make Popeye after he lost a bidding war for the film rights to Annie, lost his once-sterling reputation for being able to find hits. This was Robin Williams’s first starring role in a big screen production and his career didn’t really recover until he did Good Morning Vietnam seven years later. Never again would anyone attempt to build a film around songs written by Harry Nilsson. Screenwriter Jules Fieffer distanced himself from the film, saying that his original script had been ruined by both Robert Evans and Robert Altman. Along with Spielberg’s 1941 and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, Popeye was one of the box office failures that signaled the end of the era in which directors were given a ton of money and allowed to do whatever they wanted to with it.
I don’t care. I like Popeye. I agree with the critics about Nilsson’s score but otherwise, I think the film does a great job of capturing the feeling of a comic strip come to life. Altman was criticized for spending a lot of money to construct, from scratch, the seaside village that Popeye, Olive Oyl (Shelley Duvall), Bluto (Paul L. Smith), Wimpy (Paul Dooley), and everyone else called home but it does pay off in the movie. Watching Popeye, you really are transported to the world that these eccentric characters inhabit. If the film were made today, the majority of it would be CGI and it wouldn’t be anywhere near as interesting. Featuring one of Altman’s trademark ensemble casts, Popeye create a world that feels real and lived in.
Mumbling the majority of his lines and keeping one eye closed, Robin Williams is a surprisingly believable Popeye, even before he’s force fed spinach at the end of the movie. Paul L. Smith was an actor who was born to play the bullying Bluto and there’s something very satisfying about seeing him (literally) turn yellow. As for Shelley Duvall, she is the perfect Olive Oyl. Not only does she have the right look for Olive Oyl but she’s so energetic and charmingly eccentric in the role that it is easy to see what both Popeye and Bluto would fall in love with her. Though the humor is broad, both Williams and Duvall bring a lot of heart to their roles, especially in the scenes where they take care of their adopted infant, Swee’Pea. Popeye may be a sailor but he’s a father first.
Popeye deserves a better reputation than it has. It may not have been appreciated when it was originally released but Popeye has a robust spirit that continues to distinguish it from the soulless comic book and cartoon adaptations of today.
1976’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson takes place in the waning years of the Old West. Civilization is coming to America and the “wild” west’s days are numbered. And yet, even as the days of outlaws and gunslingers come to an end, America is already in the process of building up its own mythology.
Buffalo Bill (Paul Newman) owns a popular wild west show, one where his stars put on a show that claims to recreate the great moments of western history. The show is made up of a motely collection of performers, some of whom are more talented than others. This is a Robert Altman film and, as usual, the emphasis is more on watching how his large ensemble of actors interact as opposed to highlighting any one actor. Indeed, it can be hard to keep everyone in the film straight and one gets the feeling that this was intentional on Altman’s part. Buffalo Bill and the Indians may be a revisionist western and a satire of American history but it’s also a showbiz film. The emphasis is on people continually coming and going, sticking around long enough to either prove their worth as a performer or moving on to a hopefully more receptive audience.
Geraldine Chaplin plays Annie Oakley, the sharp shooter who takes joy in firing her gun and who barely seems to notice that her husband (John Considine) is terrified of getting shot. Joel Grey serves as the unflappable manager of the show while Harvey Keitel is miscast as Buffalo Bill’s somewhat nerdy assistant. (Keitel, with his natural intensity, seems like he’s desperately waiting for a chance to explode, a chance that never really comes.) Burt Lancaster plays Ned Buntline, the writer who made Buffalo Bill into a celebrity and who provides a somewhat sardonic commentary as Bill’s current activities. Shelley Duvall shows up as the wife of President Grover Cleveland (played by Pat McCormick), who comes to the show and is amused until an Indian points a gun towards the president.
Throughout it all, Buffalo Bill enjoys his fame and pushes his vision of the Old West on those who come to see his show. Newman plays Bill as being a blowhard, an eccentric who is obsessed with opera and whose entire persona is a fake. He can’t shoot straight. He can barely ride a horse. His trademark long hair is actually a wig. The only people who take Bill seriously as those who come to see his show. Those who know him view him as being a buffoon but they also understand that he’s a very successful and very famous buffoon and that ultimately matters more than any sort of historical truth.
What conflict there is in the film occurs when Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) and his translator (Will Sampson) arrive on the scene. Sitting Bull has agreed to appear in the show but only under his own terms. Buffalo Bill grows frustrated with Sitting Bull and his refusal to pretend to be a savage but he also knows that this audience wants to see the last remaining great Indian chief.
It’s a big and sprawling film and it’s really not entirely successful. Altman was an intelligent director who was willing to take risks and no one deserves more credit for popularizing the idea of the ensemble film. That said, he could also be a bit heavy-handed and that’s certainly the case here. It takes a certain amount of courage to cast a star like Paul Newman as a thoroughly unlikable character and it also took a bit of courage on Newman’s part to give the performance that he did. At the same time, neither the shallow Buffalo Bill nor the dignified Sitting Bull are really compelling enough characters to carry a film that runs for more than two hours. The film’s message is an obvious one and it’s also one that Altman handled in a much more memorable way with Nashville.
That said, the film is a memorable misfire. It’s at its best when it abandons the politics and just concentrates on the community of performers that popular Buffalo Bill’s show. The film’s best moments are not the ones with Paul Newman growling but instead the ones with John Considine hoping that Geraldine Chaplin won’t accidentally shoot him. As with many of Altman’s film, Buffalo Bill and the Indians works best when it focuses on the misfit community at the center of its story.
Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked. Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce. Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial. Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released. This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked. These are the Unnominated.
Elliott Gould is Phillip Marlowe!
If I had to pick one sentence to describe the plot of 1973’s The Long Goodbye, that would be it. Robert Altman’s adaptation of the Raymond Chandler detective novel loosely follows Chandler’s original plot, though Altman did definitely make a few important changes. Altman moved the story from the 50s to the then-modern 70s, replacing Chandler’s hard-boiled Los Angeles with a satirical portrait of a self-obsessed California, populated by gurus and hippies. And Altman did change the ending of the book, taking what one could argue is a firmer stand than Chandler did in the novel. In the end, though, the film really is about the idea of Chandler’s tough detective being reimagined as Elliott Gould.
Rumpled, mumbling, and with a permanent five o’clock shadow, Gould plays Marlowe as being an outsider. He lives in a shabby apartment. His only companion is a cat who randomly abandons him (as cats tend to do). With his wardrobe that seems to consist of only one dark suit, Marlowe seems out-of-place in the California of the 70s. When Marlowe’s friend, Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton), asks Marlowe to drive him to Mexico, one gets the feeling that Lennox isn’t just asking because Marlowe’s a friend. He’s asking because he suspects Marlowe would never be a good enough detective to figure out what he’s actually doing.
After Terry’s wife is murdered, Marlowe is informed that 1) Terry has committed suicide and 2) Marlowe is now a suspect. Convinced that Terry would have never killed himself, Marlowe investigates on his own. He meets Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), a gangster who demands that Marlowe recover some money that he claims Terry stole. Marty seems like an almost reasonable criminal until he smashes a coke bottle across his girlfriend’s face. (One of Marty’s bodyguards is played by a silent Arnold Schwarzenegger.) Meanwhile, Terry’s neighbors include an alcoholic writer named Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden) and his wife, Eileen (Nina van Pallandt). Like Marlowe, Roger is a man out-of-time, a Hemingwayesque writer who has found himself in a world that he is not capable of understanding. Henry Gibson, who would later memorably play Haven Hamilton in Altman’s Nashville, appears as Wade’s “doctor.”
Marlowe, with his shabby suits and a cigarette perpetually dangling from his mouth, gets next to no respect throughout the film. No one takes him seriously but Marlowe proves himself to be far more clever than anyone realizes. Elliott Gould gives one of his best performances as Marlowe, playing him as a man whose befuddled exterior hides a clear sense of right and wrong. Gould convinces us that Marlowe is a man who can solve the most complex of mysteries, even if he can’t figure out where his cat goes to in the middle of the night. His code makes him a hero but it also makes him an outsider in what was then the modern world. The film asks if there’s still a place for a man like Phillip Marlowe in a changing world and it leaves it to us to determine the answer.
Frequently funny but ultimately very serious, The Long Goodbye is one of the best detective films ever made. Just as Altman did with McCabe & Mrs. Miller, he uses the past to comment on what was then the present. And, just as with McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye is a film that was initially released to mixed reviews, though it would later be acclaimed by future viewers and critics. Whereas McCabe & Mrs. Miller received an Oscar nomination for Julie Christie’s performance as Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye was thoroughly snubbed by the Academy. Altman, Gould, Hayden, and the film itself were all worthy of consideration but none received a nomination. Instead, that year, the Oscar for Best Picture went to The Sting, a far less cynical homage to the crime films of the past.
The Long Goodbye (1973, directed by Robert Altman)
First released in 1971, McCabe & Mrs. Miller takes place in the town of Presbyterian Church at the turn of the 19th Century.
Presbyterian Church is a mining town in Washington State. When we first see the town, there’s not much to it. The town is actually named after its only substantial building and the residents refer to the various parts of the town as either being on the right side or the left side of the church. The rest of the town is half-constructed and appears to be covered in a permanent layer of grime. This is perhaps the least romantic town to ever appear in a western and it is populated largely by lazy and bored men who pass the time gambling and waiting for something better to come along.
When a gambler who says that he is named McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides into town, it causes a flurry of excitement. The man is well-dressed and well-spoken and it’s assumed that he must be someone important. Soon a rumor spreads that McCabe is an infamous gunfighter named Pudgy McCabe. Pudgy McCabe is famous for having used a derringer to shoot a man named Atwater. No one is really sure who Atwater was or why he was shot but everyone agrees that it was impressive.
McCabe proves himself to be an entrepreneur. He settles down in Presbyterian Church and establishes himself as the town’s pimp. Soon, he is joined by a cockney madam names Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie). The two of them go into business together and soon, Presbyterian Church has its own very popular bordello. Sex sells and Presbyterian Church becomes a boomtown. It attracts enough attention that two agents of a robber baron approach McCabe and offer to buy him out. McCabe refuses, thinking that he’ll get more money if he holds out. Mrs. Miller informs him that the men that he’s dealing with don’t offer to pay more money. Instead, they just kill anyone who refuses their initial offer.
Three gunmen do eventually show up at Presbyterian Church and we do eventually get an answer to the question of whether or not McCabe killed Atwater or if he’s just someone who has borrowed someone else’s legend. The final gunfight occurs as snow falls on the town and the townspeople desperately try to put out a fire at the church. No one really notices the fact that McCabe is fighting for his life at the time and, as befits a revisionist western, there’s nothing romantic or dignified about the film’s violence. McCabe is not above shooting a man in the back. The killers are not above tricking an innocent cowboy (poor Keith Carradine) into reaching for his gun so that they’ll have an excuse so gun him down. McCabe may be responsible for making Presbyterian Church into a boomtown but no one is willing to come to his aid. The lawyer (William Devane) that McCabe approaches is more interested in promoting his political career than actually getting personally involved in the situation. Mrs. Miller, a businesswoman first, smokes in an opium den with an air of detachment while the snow falls outside.
It’s a dark story with moments of sardonic humor. It’s also one of director Robert Altman’s best. The story of McCabe and Mrs. Miller and the three gunmen is far less important than the film’s portrayal of community growing and changing. Featuring an ensemble cast and Altman’s trademark overlapping dialogue, McCabe & Mrs. Miller puts the viewer right in the heart of Presbyterian Church. There are usually several stories playing out at once and it’s often up to the viewer to decide which one that they want to follow. Yes, the film is about Warren Beatty’s slick but somewhat befuddled McCabe and Julie Christie’s cynical Mrs. Miller. But it’s just as much about Keith Carradine’s Cowboy and Rene Auberjonois’s innkeeper. Corey Fischer, Michael Murphy, John Schuck, Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, and a host of other Altman mainstays all have roles as the people who briefly come into the orbit of either McCabe or Mrs. Miller. Every character has a life and a story of their own. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a film that feels as if it is truly alive.
As with many of Altman’s films, McCabe & Mrs. Miller was not fully appreciated when initially released. The intentionally muddy look and the overlapping dialogue left some critics confused and the film’s status as a western that refused to play by the rules of the genre presented a challenge to audience members who may have just wanted to see Warren Beatty fall in love with Julie Christie and save the town. But the film has endured and is now recognized as one of the best of the 70s.
Through the Shattered Lens 