Wow!
DVDs like this seem to make it all worthwhile. McCabe & Mrs. Miller,
Robert Altman’s 1971 cult classic, is the definition of an American
masterpiece. This is a perfect example of the idealized way auteurist movies
should be made; it exists unto itself without any concessions to studio profit
interests, and tells a story in its purest form.
Everything about McCabe & Mrs. Miller, from its cinematography, to
its music and ending, go against crowd-pleasing instincts. The studio hated
Vilmos Zsigmond’s flashed and grainy photography, and the film’s producer,
David Foster, admits in his commentary track that if he’d made it today,
he’d demand a happy ending.
The story is simple. The setting is turn of
the century Pacific Northwest, and John McCabe (Warren Beatty), a drunk and a
gambler, arrives in the struggling community of Presbyterian Church to set up a
business. His attempts to purchase some low-end whores catch the attention of
Constance Miller (Julie Christie), another whore, who proposes that he build a
proper brothel for her to run. Their business helps the town boom and ultimately
attracts the attention of a large corporation, which attempts to buy them out.
When McCabe tries to haggle the company’s representatives, they send a group
of mercenaries to remove him from their way.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller could very well be Robert Altman’s
quintessential work. While M*A*S*H and Nashville often obscure
anything else from his ‘70s output, this film most closely parallels
Altman’s career: He arrived at the features game with a minor industry
reputation from TV, he was a drunk and a gambler, had some huge successes, but
ultimately, through stubbornness, ran afoul of the studio system, which
basically banished him for most of the 1980s.
McCabe is something we don’t get much of anymore -- the saga of an
individual fighting against a large entity. This was commonplace during the
‘60s and ‘70s as a response to the civil rights movement and Vietnam (Billy
Jack, Network, A Clockwork Orange, The Conversation),
and even continued into the 1980s in comedic form for wise-asses like Bill
Murray and Eddie Murphy (Stripes, Beverly Hills Cop). It’s
virtually nonexistent in today’s culture of pop references and homogenization
of genuine conflict, whether racial or economic. The true lone hero has been
co-opted by industry and regurgitated as the Great American Action Hero, in the
forms of Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone (Rambo, Die Hard),
and more recently with Vin Diesel (xXx). These action films feature
loners who must save America from outside evil, whereas in the older films, the
evil being fought was from within America itself.
A studio financed documentary accompanying the DVD shows how the film was shot
on location, and how the set was built by many of the people in the story as
shooting progressed. Because it was photographed in sequence, Presbyterian
Church organically grows with the narrative.
We also learn through Robert Altman’s commentary track, that the legendary
snow blizzard shootout that climaxes the film was totally spontaneous and a
reckless decision on his part. Altman shot it against Warren Beatty’s
objections over the course of an actual storm, a rarity for the rainy Northwest.
While some foreground flakes were subsequently added by Albert Whitlock, this
sequence, which consumes the entire third act of the movie, is one of the
greatest prolonged action scenes in film history. You’ll want to watch it over
and over again -- its sense of spatial dynamics is astonishing.
There’s also Zsigmond’s cinematography, which was ineligible for an Oscar
because he wasn’t a union member. His work on this film belongs aside other
naturalistic period pieces from the same era, such as John Alcott’s Barry
Lyndon and Nestor Almendros’ Days of Heaven. I’m glad the DVD
transfer stays true to the original’s murk and grain. American Cinematographer
Magazine faulted the transfer for the very reasons I like it. Unfortunately, in
our digital age, grain, the compositing bits which form film images, are not the
same as pixels which form those on our TV screens. Pixels have a difficult time
translating grain. Most of the time I agree that older films should be cleaned
up, but in this case the “dirt” is integral to the picture’s power, and
was rightly preserved.
Nowadays, where film geeks tend to discuss movies’ visual techniques over
ideas, Robert Altman’s work needs all the help it can get. There’s never
been anything slick about it. He had a theory -- and a liberating one -- that
his actors should be constantly busy, and the camera’s job was to capture
moments without their awareness. It was about creating an environment, bloopers
and all, and weaving it all into the quilt of the narrative. Sometimes it worked
brilliantly, other times it was a mess. Such is the case with any risk,
especially when in the hands of a drunk and a gambler. Jamie Stuart
-Copyright
2002 by
Jamie Stuart