McCabe & Mrs. Miller [Criterion Collection] [2 Discs]

Director: Robert Altman Robert Altman

Overview

Memorably described by Pauline Kael as "a beautiful pipe dream of a movie," Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller reimagines the American West as a muddy frontier filled with hustlers, opportunists, and corporate sharks -- a turn-of-the-century model for a 1971 America mired in violence and lies. John McCabe (Warren Beatty) wanders into the turn-of-the-century wilderness village known as Presbyterian Church, with vague plans of parlaying his gambling winnings into establishing a fancy casino-brothel-bathhouse. McCabe's business partner is prostitute Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie), who despite her apparent distaste for McCabe helps him achieve his goal. Once McCabe and Mrs. Miller become successful, the town grows and prospers, incurring the jealousy of a local mining company that wants to buy McCabe out. Filmed on location in Canada, McCabe & Mrs. Miller makes use of such Altman "stock company" performers as Shelley Duvall, René Auberjonois, John Schuck, and Keith Carradine. The seemingly improvised screenplay was based on a novel by Edmund Naughton and the movie features a soundtrack of songs by Leonard Cohen. McCabe & Mrs. Miller joined such other Altman efforts as M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye, and Thieves Like Us in radically revising familiar movie genres for the disillusioned Vietnam era.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/11/2016
UPC:	0715515183512
Original Release:	1971
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	2:01:00
Sales rank:	13,227

Special Features

New 4K Digital Restoration ; Audio Commentary from 2002 featuring Director Robert Altman and Producer David Foster; New Making-Of Documentary, featuring members of the Cast and Crew; New converation about the film and Altman's career between film historians Carl Beauchamp and Rick Jewell; Featurette from the film's 1970 production; Art Directors Guild Film Society Q&A fro 1999 with Production Designer Leon Ericksen; Excerpts from archival interviews with Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmong; Gallery of stills from the set by Photographer Steve Schapiro; Excerpts from two 1971 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Altman and film critic Pauline Kael; Trailer; Plus: An essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Warren Beatty	John McCabe
Julie Christie	Constance Miller
John Schuck	Smalley
William Devane	Lawyer
Bert Remsen	Bart
Keith Carradine	Cowboy
Corey Fischer	Elliot,Mr. Elliott
Shelley Duvall	Ida Coyle
Michael Murphy	Sears,Kate
Antony Holland	Hollander
Tom Hill	Archer
Don Francks	Buffalo,Mrs. Washington
Rodney Gage	Sumner Washington
Hugh Millais	Dog Butler
Manfred Schulz	Kid
Jackie Crossland	Lily
Carey Lee McKenzie	Alma
Linda Sorenson	Blanche
Elisabeth Knight	Birdie,Birdie
Janet Wright	Eunice
Maysie Hoy	Maisie
Linda Kupecek	Ruth
Jeremy Newsom	Jeremy Berg
Wayne Robson	Bartender
Wayne Grace	Bartender
Jack Riley	Riley Quinn
Robert Fortier	Town Drunk
Wesley Taylor	Shorty Dunn
Anne Cameron	Mrs. Dunn
Graeme Campbell	Bill Cubbs
J.S. Johnson	J.J.
Joe Clarke	Joe Shortreed
Harry Frazier	Andy Anderson
Edwin Collier	Gilchrist
Terence Kelly	Quigley
Brantley F. Kearns	Fiddler
Joan Maguire	Town Resident
Harvey Lowe	Town Resident
Milos Zatovic	Town Resident
Claudine Melgrave	Town Resident
Derek Deurvorst	Town Resident
Alexander Daikun	Town Resident
Gordon Robertson	Town Resident
Jace Van Der Veen	Breed
Jeremy Newson	Jeremy Berg
René Auberjonois	Sheehan
Derek Keurvorst	Actor
Eric Schneider	Townsperson
Léonard Cohen	Composer,Composer

Technical Credits

Robert Altman

Brian McKay

Robert Altman	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Brian McKay	Screenwriter
Mitchell Brower	Producer
David Foster	Producer
Graeme Clifford	Casting
Marcel Vercoutere	Special Effects
William Thompson	Sound/Sound Designer

Scene Index

Disc #1 -- McCabe & Mrs. Miller
1. The Stranger [4:58]
2. "A Big Rep" [10:59]
3. "Sisters Of Mercy" [7:58]
4. No Partners [3:03]
5. Mrs. Miller [8:37]
6. "A Right To Know" [3:51]
7. The New Girls [9:40]
8. Sears and Roebuck [7:47]
9. Counteroffer [9:17]
10. Funeral [1:00]
11. McCabe's Price [7:24]
12. "Poetry In Me" [9:48]
13. "The Scales Of Justice" [2:17]
14. Cowboy's Last Stand [5:11]
15. "Winter Lady" [3:23]
16. Dawn Patrol [3:52]
17. Fire [9:04]
18. Butler vs. McCabe [6:07]
19. Whiteout [3:39]
1. Color Bars [2:59]
1. "In Dead Sequence" [4:58]
2. "Chasing Genres" [10:59]
3. "The Gypsy Life" [7:58]
4. Hats [3:03]
5. Progress [8:37]
6. "Inspired By Agents" [3:51]
7. Stanley Kubrick [9:40]
8. Work of Art [7:47]
9. Actors vs. Extras [9:17]
10. Western Lore [1:00]
11. Leonard Cohen [7:24]
12. Soliloquy [9:48]
13. "Timing and Luck" [2:17]
14. "Quite a Stunt" [5:11]
15. The Chase [3:23]
16. Snow [3:52]
17. The Presbyterian Church [9:04]
18. Box Office [6:07]
19. Honest Ending [3:39]
1. Color Bars [2:59]
Disc #2 -- McCabe & Mrs, Miller
1. Chapter 1 [54:08]
2. Chapter 2 [:26]
1. Chapter 1 [35:59]
2. Chapter 2 [:25]
1. Chapter 1 [9:31]
1. Chapter 1 [37:33]
1. Chapter 1 [11:04]
2. Chapter 2 [:25]
1. Chapter 1 [10:33]
1. Chapter 1 [11:48]

Menu

Disc #1 -- McCabe & Mrs. Miller
   Play The Movie
   Chapters
   Commentary
      Commentary: On/Off
      Index
   Trailer
Disc #2 -- McCabe & Mrs, Miller
   Way Out On A Limb
      Play
      Chapters
   Cari Beauchamp And Rick Jewell
      Play
      Chapters
   Behind The Scenes
      Play
      Chapters
   Leon Ericksen
      Play
      Chapters
   Vilmos Zsigmond
      Play
      Chapters
   Steve Schapiro Photo Gallery
   The Dick Cavett Show
      Pauline Kael
         Chapters
      Robert Altman
         Chapters

Editorial Reviews

The greatest of Robert Altman's '70s genre revisions (which include The Long Goodbye and Thieves Like Us), McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a film steeped in '60s counterculture idealism that lays to rest heroic myths of the Old West. Warren Beatty stars as McCabe, a slightly dim but goodhearted gambler who, with the help of a no-nonsense, opium-smoking madam, Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie in an Oscar-nominated performance), sets up a successful brothel in a Pacific Northwest mining town. Taking the classic western's essential plot element -- a loner at odds with established society (in this case, a ruthless mining corporation) -- Altman spins a poetic vision of the frontier that is at once romantic and antiromantic, unsentimental in its take on love yet as delicate in texture as a Victorian valentine. Eschewing the dusty, wide-open spaces typical of the genre, McCabe and Mrs. Miller offers the most authentic and perfectly realized depiction of the Old West ever put on film. The smoky warmth of cramped and dimly lit interiors is contrasted to brilliant effect with rain-and-snow-shrouded exteriors, particularly during the final, unforgettable shootout, wherein McCabe confronts the mining company mercenaries sent to kill him. Shot in desaturated color by the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond, the film has the hazy beauty of an antique photograph underscored by the haunting strains of Leonard Cohen's mournful ballads. Every character, down to the most minor, feels fully rounded and alive, and such Altman regulars as Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, and John Schuck all shine. Turning the whore-with-a-golden-heart cliché on its head, Christie's Mrs. Miller is intelligent and enigmatic, with an emotional frigidity mirrored in the icy landscape: She makes the besotted McCabe pay for her sexual favors right up to the end, yet reveals heartbreaking flashes of tenderness and compassion. And Beatty, in his finest performance, is both funny and moving as a man in love with a woman he can't comprehend. Lyrical and deeply sad, McCabe and Mrs. Miller reinvented the western for the 1970s and became one of the enduring masterpieces of American cinema.

Barnes & Noble - Kryssa Schemmerling

Deconstructing the Western, Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) defied conventional myth-making with an oblique narrative steeped in Vietnam-era mistrust of American institutions. Shooting on location in Canada on a haphazard set built as filming progressed, Altman upended Western clichés of heroic Progress in an environment that was authentically rough, even as it evoked the muddy mires of Vietnam. Warren Beatty's McCabe was more buffoonish dreamer than powerful gunfighter, while Julie Christie's business-minded hooker Mrs. Miller had a heart of opium; Altman's widescreen zoom shots and soundtrack of overlapping voices and haunting Leonard Cohen songs downplayed McCabe's presence amid peripheral action and characters. The incursion of corporate interests on McCabe's success seems almost incidental, but the sudden eruption of pointless violence and a lawyer's hypocrisy about freedom and sacrifice reveal McCabe's doom. With cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond's grainy, desaturated colors lending the interiors an orange-brown glow that contrasted with the hazy green-gray exteriors, Altman eschewed heroic frontier vistas in favor of a murky, hallucinatory beauty, particularly in McCabe's snowbound, eerily quiet final shoot-out. Confounding viewers with its layered soundtrack and tonal shifts, McCabe & Mrs. Miller failed to catch on; it has since come to be seen as one of the period's best revisionist Westerns and one of the most poetic and elegiac genre revisions of the 1970s.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola