Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, one of the director’s best works, represents a high point for the western. Not so much because it encompasses everything people love about the genre, as is the case with Howard Hawk’s Red River, but for its constant reminders that it is the complete opposite of what a western should be.
Though on the surface a brilliant subversion of established Western myths—such as Altman’s focus on the female lead as the more grounded and less romantic of the two, and John McCabe’s ultimate downfall as a rejection of a capitalist civilization—McCabe & Mrs. Miller’s real appeal lies in the intimate story behind its post-modern aspects. For a film with so much thought behind it, it is the restrained narrative that grows out of the half-heard exchanges between its title characters that leaves the viewer most overwhelmed.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller catalogues the arrival of John McCabe to Presbyterian Church, a turn of the century, mostly-male town with horrible weather. McCabe rides in on his horse to the strands of Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song,” walks into the bar, and proceeds to gamble with the townsmen. Someone heard he once shot a guy named Bill Roundtree; “Businessman, businessman,” McCabe assures.
He plans to open a saloon, and shortly after his arrival goes to a nearby town to purchase three “chippies.” “It’s partners I don’t like,” he tells the same bartender who suspects he’s a gunslinger. McCabe’s sure he can make it on his own (that he doesn’t is given away in the title). Constance Miller, an ex-whore who “knows a lot about whorehouses,” comes to town looking for McCabe, and makes him an offer. He’ll put up all the money, and she’ll “take care of the rest,” which mostly means dealing with the girls. From the beginning there’s a glare in McCabe’s eyes when Mrs. Miller is around; the audience knows the deal has very little do with money and potential profit.
The scenes between them are wonderfully understated; with this film, Altman gives the audience moments so subtle they are almost impossible to notice on a first viewing. Consider the scene when McCabe comes to his new whorehouse to deliver Constance’s mail, only to hear that “she’s with someone.” The look in McCabe’s eyes imparts more about the inadequacies of not being able to express oneself than any other film I’ve seen. As it turns out, Mrs. Miller was just helping a new girl get acquainted to the idea of being a whore. Another such moment comes when, at a funeral, a man rides into town; both McCabe and Mrs. Miller suspect he’s there to kill him (and therefore get all his holdings in Presbyterian Church[this logistical incentive – why McC would want the man’s money – should be explained]), and the look on Mrs. Miller’s eyes is one of quiet suffering, and is utterly heartbreaking.
Some of the best things about McCabe & Mrs. Miller are those brief glimpses of astonishing beauty, made possible by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and Altman’s invisible direction (complete with his inimitable zooms). The film, like a lot of the director’s other works, depends more on mood than on a conventional structure. After the film is over what remains is not the memory of a story (or a film for that matter), but an overbearing feeling of sadness in Altman’s beautifully miserable frontier.
