McCabe & Mrs. Miller

A mining town in Washington State at the start of the twentieth century. The gambler McCabe opens a brothel; Mrs Miller, an English madam, is the one who knows how to run it. As the town grows a mining company arrives, and the offer to buy quickly becomes a threat. Robert Altman directed. The film inverts every convention of the Western: the hero is incompetent, the enemy is a corporation rather than an outlaw, and there is negotiation instead of a fight. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond flashed the negative before exposure to get a faded texture and deepened it with filters. Lou Lombardo edited it over nine months, and the overlapping dialogue works as a sound effect rather than a carrier of information. The score includes three Leonard Cohen songs. Altman said he only heard Cohen's first album years after the shoot and that the songs fitted so well he concluded the lyrics had been etched in his subconscious. Reviews split on release. Rex Reed called it totally worthless garbage; Roger Ebert gave it four stars and called it perfect, and Pauline Kael praised it as a beautiful pipe dream. Rotten Tomatoes now sits at 85 percent. The American Film Institute ranks it eighth among American Westerns. It entered the National Film Registry in 2010 and Julie Christie was nominated for Best Actress. Who it is for: viewers curious about the Western taken apart and about Altman's sound design. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to hear the dialogue clearly. The talk deliberately overlaps and missing some of it is part of the plan.