Screening

About McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Rating:

R R

Year Released:

1971

Genres:

Drama, Western

Metadata:

Directed by Robert Altman

Presbyterian Church is a small mining town in the turn-of-the-century Pacific Northwest—and a perfect place where gambler John Q. McCabe and bordello madam Constance Miller can do business. Robert Altman's dazzingly original McCabe & Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, stands the mythology of the Old West on its ear. Shot on beautiful Vancouver wilderness locations, this 1971 film captures the essence of a long-ago time, coupled with the edgy modern sensibility Altman brought to his other ‘70s masterworks M*A*S*H and Nashville. The spellbinding result, critic Pauline Kael wrote, is "a modern classic."

The film, which features a soundtrack of songs by Leonard Cohen, is being screened in commemoration of Cohen, who died in November. Rolling Stone credits Cohen’s soundtrack with turning Altman’s film into a masterpiece—How Leonard Cohen's Music Turned 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller' Into a Masterpiece: “McCabe and Mrs. Miller's beauty and poignancy comes from the attempt to put that poetry onto the screen in gorgeously hazy visuals and piercingly sad ballads that transport the viewer to a bygone world—an old, violent America frontier that was soon to be snuffed out and tamed in the name of manifest destiny.” (2K DCP Presentation)