A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Old West mining town, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a 1971 American Western film starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, and directed by Robert Altman. The screenplay is by Altman and Brian McKay from the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton. The cinematography is by Vilmos Zsigmond and the soundtrack includes three songs by Leonard Cohen issued on his 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen. As one of Altman's naturalist films, the director called it an "anti-western film" because the film ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions. Altman was introduced to the story by David Foster, one of the film's producers. Foster had been introduced to the story by the widow of novelist Richard Wright, an agent for Edmund Naughton, who was then living in Paris and working for the International Herald Tribune. The film was originally called The Presbyterian Church Wager, after a bet placed among the church's few attendees about whether McCabe would survive his refusal of the offer to sell his property. Altman reported that an official in the Presbyterian Church called Warner Brothers to complain about having their church mentioned in context of a film about brothels and gambling. The complaint prompted a name change to John Mac Cabe but it was further changed and released as McCabe & Mrs Miller. The film was shot in West Vancouver and in Squamish, almost entirely in sequential order — a rarity for films. The crew found a suitable location for the filming and, as filming progressed, built up the "set" as McCabe built up the town in the film. In the film, Mrs. Miller is brought into town on a J. I. Case 80 HP steam engine from 1912; the steam engine is genuine and functioning and the crew used it to power the lumber mill after its arrival. Carpenters for the film were locals and young men from the United States, fleeing conscription into the Vietnam War; they were dressed in period costume and used tools of the period so that they could go about their business in the background while the plot advanced in the foreground. The music for the film was largely by Leonard Cohen. Altman had liked Cohen's debut album immensely, buying additional copies of it after wearing each one out. Then he had forgotten about the LP. Years later he visited Paris, just after finishing shooting on McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and rediscovered the album; he had it transferred and started the music to maintain a rhythm for the film (in effect initially being used as a "temp" track). He didn't expect to be able to procure rights for the music since it was a Warner Brothers film and Cohen's album was released through Columbia Records. He called Cohen, expecting to trade off his recent success with M*A*S*H, but found that Cohen had no knowledge of the film. Instead, he had loved Altman's less popular follow-up film Brewster McCloud, and arranged for his record company to license the music cheaply, even writing into the contract that sales of that album after the release of McCabe would turn some of the royalties to Altman (an arrangement which at the time was quite unusual). Later, on watching McCabe to come up with a guitar riff for one scene, Cohen decided he didn't like the film, but honored his contract. A year later he called Altman to apologize, saying he had seen the film again and loved it. For the distinctive cinematography, Altman and Zsigmond chose to 'flash' (pre-fog) the actual film negative, as well as use a number of filters on the cameras, rather than manipulate the film in post-production; in this way the studio could not force him to change the film's look to something less distinctive.
Loading...
11:54
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) Part 5by thepirateboy812,713 views
Link to this comment:
All Comments (0)