MCCABE & MRS. MILLER Retrospective

Mumbling gambler John McCabe (Warren Beatty, in one of his best performances) arrives in the snowy mining town of Presbyterian Church and opens a provisional brothel, only to have tack-sharp Constance Miller (a wise and luminous Julie Christie) appear on the scene and offer to show him how it’s really done. The two go into business, and so begins one of the greatest love stories in the history of cinema — founded in a partnership of profit, complicated by an opium addiction and transactional sex, and yet beautifully tender in its unspoken longing and mutual respect. All set to the tunes of poet-musician Leonard Cohen, Robert Altman’s McCABE & MRS. MILLER is an inimitable revisionist Western and one of the best films of his career. – Beth Hanna