McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971 - Robert Altman)
Screening here in Portland last night; one of Bob Altman's best films. Subverts the Western genre in such an interesting way and grounds it all in such a palpable, muddy, unglamorous reality. Unglamorous even though it stars two of the prettiest human beings to ever grace a movie screen in the title roles (Warren Beatty and Julie Christie). The use of the Leonard Cohen on the soundtrack was such a bold idea and it is a magical combination: it really does seem as if those songs were written for the movie and the time period. Beautiful stuff.
Seeing it in the cinema, if forced to pinpoint the biggest joys they are probably Vilmos Zsigmond's still amazing cinematography and the town itself. Vilmos has been nominated for four Oscars and won one (for
Close Encounters of the Third Kind), but embarrassingly he wasn't even nominated for his work on
McCabe. It was this movie where he pioneered a "pre-flashing" technique, exposing the film to levels of light before it was used, the result being that faded almost sepia-like misting and coloring that still retains a high contrast.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller doesn't look like any movie before it.
BEATTY, ZSIGMOND and ALTMAN
And that town of Presbyterian Church, what a far cry from the usual Western town. Set in the Pacific Northwest and filmed in the forest along the coast of British Columbia north of Vancouver, the attention to detail is simply incredible. It really does seem as if a time machine has gone back and made a documentary of this small mining town going up. Gives a sense of place as well as any movie ever made. You can practically feel the cold and smell the timber. The only flaw on the technical side of things that is still a little distracting (and I've seen this movie a few dozen times) is that they ran into some bad luck weather wise and were forced to fake much of the snowfall for the climactic showdown as process shots and you can't help but notice - especially on the big screen. But it's a minor gripe in a movie I find otherwise damn near perfect.
As much as a technical marvel as it is,
McCabe is also a very emotionally engaging story. John McCabe and Constance Miller are characters you care about almost instantly. They are flawed and doomed, but aren't most human beings? As pessimistic as it may seem on first flush, I find it very beautiful and not the downer the way it ends signals it probably should be. Haunting, but not exactly sad. And I still am awed by the guts Altman had to make the finale almost silent for long stretches of "action". Right when a traditional score or even a radical Ennio Morricone score would be blasting away, Altman chooses silence. It works really well for me. And that reminds me of something else that was wonderful about last night: the Portland, Oregon audience. Not only was the theater more than half full (at least a hundred and fifty people in the auditorium) to see a movie that is coming up on forty-years-old on a Saturday night in March, but during that largely silent final sequence the audience was silent too! Damn, I do love this town.
I think seeing any Robert Altman film projected on a big screen is probably a good idea, even the bad ones (and he had plenty). But when you've got one of his masterworks...damn.
Reply to Topic
