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Summary: FINALLY, the DVD is here......
Review: Warner Brothers should be commended for giving "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" the deluxe DVD treatment, complete with Robert Altman commentary (he is also joined by the producer of the film). Fans have been waiting a long time for this one.The film itself is a marvel of risky filmmaking -- shot in a dirty, makeshift frontier town in Vancouver, it eschews narrative conventions and heroic characters for complexity and, for once, a realistic assessment of the American West. Altman never overtly reveals the themes of his works, but instead respects the audience enough to contemplate and decide on its own. The futility of individualism in the face of market capitalism? The illusion (and traps) of community? The ultimate emptiness of the American Dream? Perhaps all, perhaps none. The film must remain a subjective, personal experience and as such, it remains one of the best.
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Summary: Destruction of the American Western
Review: Robert Altman once again demonstrates his inability to comprehend the essence of his film's subject. The dismal story of this would-be-Western is only matched by the dismal photography by Vilmos Zsigmond. This film helped destroy the iconic myth of the American West. I do not like this movie at all.
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Summary: Truly Fantastic Altman!
Review: Finally on dvd!! This is great! This is certainly one of my favorite films by Robert Altman(right up there with THE LONG GOODBYE, 3 WOMEN, CALIFORNIA SPLIT and NASHVILLE). Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography is stellar of course(as it was in a film he did a little later-SCARECROW). The music by Leonard Cohen sets the tone of the film from the opening credits forward. Beatty, Julie Christie and lots of Altman's regulars are all suberb. It's just such a great movie, you need to own it don't you?(cheap too! with a commentary and a featurette!!!)
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Summary: Masterpiece Extraordinaire of Citizens McCabe and Miller
Review: Most of Altmans films are in panorama. That is they focus on large groups and social interaction and their purpose is social comment rather than intimate character study. There are a few exceptions though: The Long Goodbye73, Thieves Like Us74, & McCabe and Mrs. Miller71. The world in the background behind Beatty's McCabe and Christie's Mrs. Miller feels very much like the former kind of Altman film but in the foreground are those two characters intimately drawn The most intimate portraits Altman has ever drawn. Beatty wisely wears a beard to hide those good looks and accentuate his formidable acting ability and Christie never strikes any glamourous poses and so though you have the two most glamourous actors in 70 's Hollywood this movie is just the opposite of glamourous. It is a gritty and violent world they inhabit and each glimpse of either of those two lead actors is just a further subversion of our ideals of the archetypical hero and heroine. The frontier townsfolk(Altmans grass roots troops) are all the Altman regulars and they are also fascinating to watch, however they are not dreamers like McCabe and Mrs. Miller and have no grand ambitions and so they are safe from the violence which checks anyone who doesn't abide by the laws set by the truly powerful frontier shapers. In the as yet unshaped wild west a few powerful men are making fortunes by buying up railroad towns and they allow no one to interefere. When necessary they exert their power with hired guns. And this movie has some menacing killers in it. The western myth of an open frontier is just that a myth. Many other lesser myths perpetuated by countless western movies are also given a fresh and sobering look. The stars are Beatty and Christie though. Both are enterprising and both have considerable abilities to make things happen in the wide expanses of the west but their inner lives are expanses that neither are equipped to deal with. You have to be rough to make it in the west and what suffers is all those more civilized characteristics which must be put on hold while the fortune is made. Beatty's courtship of Christie is fascinating to watch. She has an English accent and is innately more civilized than he, so much so that she seems out of place in the very uncivil west, she finds solace in opium. Beatty struggeles to break through to her but he's hopelessly unrefined. Experincing one rejection after another he slams his hat down mumbling to himself,"I've got poetry in me." Very funny and very moving. Beatty and Christie in a just world both would have received best actor awards for this movie, and the movie itself is the most deserving of praise of all of Altmans pictures. In some ways it is an atypical Altman picture in that it concentrates so much on two lives instead of twenty which is more typical of Altman, the other characters merely fill in the western void each in their own way(Carradine another memorable appearance)but they never take the focus off of those main two. Altmans best. Beatty and Christie's best too.
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Summary: John C.
Review: McCabe and Mrs. Miller, in the opinion of this observer, is among the 10 best films made in the United States in the second half of the 20th century. There is a subtlety to this film that is unlike any other made during this most fertile period of American cinema. The cinematography (by the great Vilmos Zsigmond), sound editing, and - most important ly- acting are nonpareil, especially the performances of Julie Christie and John Schuck. The film established Robert Altman as a director and writer to be reckoned with. The experience of watching this film - even on tape and DVD - is blissful, and reminds one of the potential that American cinema presented between 1967-1975, before "Jaws' and "Star Wars" altered the economic landscape.
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Summary: The greatest anti-western ever made
Review: When you watch enough westerns, Holywood grows on you. You eventually start wishing to see a new take on the old myth, which was tried before so many times. Here, Altman is at his best. In McCabe, he sure does not aim to appeal to the teenager popcorn crowd: this is the thinking man's western without the cliches of the hollywood's thinking man movies. In McCabe, the good are more vulnerable, the bad are more persistent, and the ugly are,well, pretty ugly. On a closer look, Mc Cabe is a sublime, heartbreaking story of a man's struggle to survive, rather than a straight good vs. evil tale. I sometimes think Altman intended just to tell that, rather than taking on the whole western myth and change it so daringly. But then again, there is "The Long Goodbye", in which he did the same deconstruction with the the detective-noir, which is also excellent! McCabe might be, to some viewers and critics, a distant, slow, mellow, disorienting and confusing experience that does not amount to much. But for some, it is sparkling brilliant insight on each and every viewing today. And down the line, it is likely to be remembered as one of the landmarks of American cinema.
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Summary: What's all the fuss?
Review: Thirty years ago this film left me feeling cold and empty, but after seeing these five star reviews I decided to give it another chance. I was ready to admit that perhaps I had missed something in my youthful days. No such luck. This film did not age gracefully. I am a great fan of Leonard Cohen but thirty years ago he lacked the deep somber tones he does so well today. His early sweetness is in stark contrast to the rest of the setting. (And his "Sisters of Mercy" was clearly directed to the arrival of the "high class" hookers and not the cross being raised as one reviewer stated.) As to Warren Beatty's "performance of his career" he plays the same role he does in all his films: the bumbling but endearing misfit who never gets it right. The viewers are asked to believe he builds the little town into a booming city by bringing in three destitute "chippies." It's too great a leap of faith for me. Julie Christie has some great films but this is not one of them. She appears stone even without her opium pipe. Like Beatty, she is also casted as a pillar of capitalism. Sorry but it just does not make sense. Finally, this film has way too much of the "realism" that my fellow reviewers all seem to praise. No doubt Jack London would love the intense "man against nature" and "man against man" that he did so well in his writings. But after thirty years this film still leaves me cold and empty.
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Summary: Release on DVD!!!
Review: This is one of the great films of the last 50 years. Altman at his best along with a soundtrack by Leonard Cohen that matches the poetry of the photography beat by beat, and a one more thing... It is impossible to watch this film and not appreciate that Warren Beatty must be one of the most underappreciated actors working. This great film needs to be released on DVD. Just for the scene with the cross being raised on the church at the beginning of Leonard Cohen's rendition of "Sisters Of Mercy" alone.
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Summary: The Greatest Contemporary Western
Review: Simply brilliant in every aspect. Acting, photography, writing, direction, sound track etc. Altman has crafted one of his finest and most enduring films as well as one of the top five best films of the 70's. Warner needs to issue this on video and DVD in widescreen to give it proper justice.
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Summary: A masterpiece from the 70s' greatest director.
Review: This is generally called an 'anti' Western, in the way Altman's other films are anti-detective films, anti-war films etc. But that sounds so negative. Altman does destroy a load of hoary macho myths, but he puts something incredibly beautiful in its place - a vivid, teeming picture of a place, people, time and culture. His entrepreneur/gunslinger and tart-with-a-heart do exist as negative versions of their usual film types, but they are also endearing, movingly inarticulate ordinary people struggling to fulfil those roles, especially as played by Beatty (very funny and sympathetic) and Christie. The film's scrupulous realism clashes fruitfully with Altman's distracting camerawork, simultaneously alerting and misleading us to crucial and irrelevant information. In other words, treating his audience like they have a brain - some people did that 30 years ago.
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