Easily the best film of 1971

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Here's why. To me, this film constitutes a crucial link in the trajectory of films that broke the genre limitations of the western. And that link is what connects Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) with Unforgiven (1992).

Genre limitations?!? You clearly haven't seen many classic Westerns. Because many of these great Westerns did in fact break the genre limitations. Much more successfully and artistically more interesting than Sergio Leone.

Once Upon A Time In The West did nothing, except a kind of pastische of many Westerns far better than it. It's clever bit of casting Henry Fonda as a child-killer is just a gimmick nothing compared to the great casting Ford did in Fort Apache.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller was revolutionary in not approaching the subject matter as Westerns and genre conventions and instead pursued the great idea of re-creating how the frontier terrain might have actually been based on copious research and detailing. The breathtaking visuals being based on worn, sepia-tinted photographs from that period. It is therefore not really a Western in the traditional sense while Unforgiven definitely is, a great western.

So if that's your reasons for it being the best film of it's year and one of the best of it's decade...

In Altman's film, just as in Leone's, the main protagonist starts out as a larger-than-life mythical figure. The tavern folk treat McCabe with respect, trading rumors about his glorious past, refer to him as a "gun-slinger." The way in which McCabe is filmed as he approaches the tavern, complete with the sequence where he lights a cigar before crossing the bridge, everything in the opening scenes paints him as a mythical larger-than-life hero.

Well you clearly haven't seen it carefully. John McCabe is NOT treated as any larger-than-life hero but rather as a vagabond gambler and hustler looking to settle down. Consider how when we see him first through the rain he seems like a yeti and then before entering that town he removes that and shows himself in this suit and then wears a derby all the while you have that very sad Leonard Cohen number on the track. From the onset his vulnerability is emphasized. And the scenes between him and Mrs. Miller emphasize his lack of intelligence and grace but also his charm(which she beautifullly describes as "frontier wit").

Altman's interest is not to mythologize or de-mythologize anyone but to show them as human beings. So John McCabe is no one but John McCabe, Constance Miller is no one but Constance Miller. She's no symbol of anything. McCabe is not a cowboy. The only one who can be called one is a dopey kid(played by Keith Carradine) who gets brutally slaughtered by a pint-sized runt.

On to Constance. At first she is just a mirror reflection of Leone's Jill McBain. Both are whores and really don't mind it, these are the kind of women who really helped build the West.

Pardon me but Claudia Cardinale's character was a mail-order bride not a prostitute. In Altman's film that's pretty much the same thing, but Leone doesn't have that sophistication, being an inferior director than Altman. Leone's film re-inforces the old stereotypes of women in the West needing men to be their chivalric nights. While this film dispenses with all that misogyny.

I'll respond to your other section in another post. I'll just say that if Altman's film is any Western tradition than it is in the tradition of John Ford. Especially The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance which contains the same elegiac, sad atmosphere as McCabe & Mrs. Miller and similarly embraces the pioneers with all their flaws over the civilizers with their sophistication and education who in the end betray all their principles. That scene with William Devane is very much in that tradition. Although he turns out to be useless, what he says and how his character is shown is not. Especially when he says, "So long as people keep dying for freedom, people won't be free."

So it's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - McCabe & Mrs. Miller and then Unforgiven. Films in very different styles and tones by different film directors.




"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes

I saw McCabe and Constance as representative of the two main character traits that helped build the West. He stood for the idealism, she was an embodiment of the pragmatism.

More that he stood for naivete and she stands for survival. She's more resourceful, more intelligent and not in the least bit interested in any ideals save for self-preservation as well as the self-preservation of her prostitutes whom she cares about a lot, even if she brings them into what's essentially a dead end but then a better dead-end than their other available choices. But the tragedy of her character is that she can't go any further than survival. Her dream is to earn enough money to start a legitimate boarding house. And McCabe turning down that offer from that mining company was also her chance at getting out that she has lost for good.

Constance in the meantime keeps charging everyone including McCabe, because she knows that nothing is more valuable than money.

Not necessarily. She does it because she doesn't want to get emotionally involved with anyone. The only time she does is for McCabe whom she cradles briefly. Probably the only time she didn't charge him money. The opium addiction is also to numb her emotions. That's how she survives and it's not a lot different than McCabe lying dead in the snow. His soul finally frozen. While her's is numbed.

And McCabe's opposition is not a mythical bad boy in a dark hat, but a faceless corporation.

And one against whom he loses in the end even if he shoots those gunmen. The point of view of McCabe & Mrs. Miller is the next step of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In that film cowboys like John Wayne are replaced by idealistic politicians like James Stewart. Politicians who despite their ideals end up compromising and betraying it, who actually profit by those compromises and betrayals while dedicated honest people like John Wayne die all alone in a coffin in a shop.

John McCabe and the townsfolk however violent they are built that town with their hands, their blood and that hard work, that achievement is buried and forgotten, even nullified by people with more money and power who despite their education end up using the same methods to defeat them as they do in their own primitive ways. Essentially Altman contrasts two kind of businesses while for Ford it's methods of justice and government. The whorehouse which is maintained with professionalism which takes care of it's employees(and obviously the customers) creates a genuine sense of community among the prostitutes which is absent in the rest of the townsfolk. While the ruthless mining company who despite their more modern ways and higher education are just as barbaric and brutal as that guy who cracks open Bart Coyle's skull.




"Ça va by me, madame...Ça va by me!" - The Red Shoes

It's my #1 of 1971 and favorite Altman film. Beatty should have been nominated along with Christie (who should have won) and Hugh Milais should have won Supporting Actor, along with Cinematography, Picture, and Director

The film fails on the literal level (2d characters) and the metaphors you refer to are half baked at best. Unforgiven is a brilliant film because of it's development of William Munny; McCabe is mediocre because of the lack of development of its protagonist.

Still, I salute the effort you put into this, too bad you didn't choose a more worthy film to spend your time on.

As for 1971, the best film I've seen from that year is Dirty Harry; McCabe is the worst.


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McCabe and Mrs. Miller 5/10



This story is already over

Two Points:
1) "Easily" the best film of 1971?? The Last Picture Show also dates from that year, and both of the films are among the best films of the whole decade, much less the year. No film is "easily the best film of 1971." Sheesh.

2) How can you discuss the films that broke open the Western genre without mentioning The Wild Bunch (1969) with its intense meditations on violence and modernity, twisted morality, and anti-heroes? It's a hugely important film.

if its the best of 71 it just means there were a lot of *beep* ass movies made in 71.