| McCabe & Mrs. Miller | 
 enlarge | Director: Robert Altman
Actors: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $6.49
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Avg. Customer Rating:  73 reviews
Sales Rank: 9226
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Japanese (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 121
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
MPN: WARD11055D
ISBN: 0790765225
UPC: 085391105527
EAN: 9780790765228
ASIN: B000063K2Q
Theatrical Release Date: June 24, 1971
Release Date: June 4, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: ******BRAND NEW****** ** Over 1.5 million orders shipped worldwide and more than 500 000 items in stock, BUY FROM A TRUSTED SOURCE, ESTABLISHED SINCE 1998 - INETVIDEO ~~~
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Product Description
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 06/03/2003 Run time: 121 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com essential video
Iconoclastic director Robert Altman (Nashville, M.A.S.H.), deconstructs and demythologizes Hollywood's typically romantic vision of the Old West in this haunting, breathtaking masterpiece. A stranger, McCabe (Warren Beatty's best performance), the film's nonheroic protagonist, rides into a dead northwest mountain town (to the mournful sounds of Leonard Cohen), possessing ambitious entrepreneurial dreams of expansion. As the town grows, Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie's finest role, as well), a tough madam, arrives and convinces McCabe to join her in a partnership. Neither are typical Western archetypes: McCabe's an insecure braggart, bumbling lover, and horrible businessman, while Mrs. Miller, hardly a whore with a heart of gold, favors her opium pipe to her partner's romantic advances. Altman, meanwhile, buries these central characters within the town's complex, richly detailed tapestry of characters, preferring to eavesdrop on their overlapping conversations and study the bleak, harsh conditions of their lifestyles. At its core, the film addresses the sacrifices of individualism needed in order to build a community, an American concept that the independent Altman views with skeptical irony. The inevitable final shoot-out underscores the theme. Because McCabe refuses to sell the town he built to a corporation, hired bounty hunters are sent. Instead of a showdown at high noon, the finale--one of Altman's most beautiful set pieces--takes place in the snow, guerilla warfare style. As McCabe runs and hides for his life, the town he created preoccupies itself with saving a burning church instead of their creator, while Mrs. Miller, stoned and grinning, detaches herself from either concern. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond captures the town's brutal textures in luminous Cinemascope. --Dave McCoy
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| Customer Reviews: Read 68 more reviews...
 My Favorite Western! November 19, 2008
It's Altman at his best, with a cast that clearly believed in him and relished the opportunity to be directed by him. This movie is as close to cinematic poetry as you're ever gonna get. Altman demonstrates his gift and mastery at mood, texture and tone, while skillfully adding rich layers of nuance and wit to this somewhat simple tale of a complex man -- or is McCabe a simple man in a complex tale? Beatty and Christie are nothing less than inspirational, and Carradine makes me cry (his earnest commitment the character and the haunting believability that results should be studied by every wannabe actor seeking the true goods). Such confident, restrained, detailed and thus moving filmmaking from an American master -- Altman never made a more beautiful film. Oh, to have been at least a background player in this experience (for Altman even approached their roles with a thoroughness that adds to the piece's overall realism and sense of actual community); a dream job for any performer. And Cohen's music works wonders with the film's atmosphere; I can't think of anyone else who coulda pulled it off more compatibly -- Neil Young maybe? Willie Nelson? Overall, I can't say enough about this one. I watch it each year, and it never fails to enhance my love for it in new ways every time.
Brilliant! September 1, 2008
I loved this film when I saw it when it first came out. The combination of Beatty and Christie, who were an item at the time, assured its success with a lot of people. I wondered how I'd react to it now, so many years later. I was happy that, although it didn't have the huge emotional impact that it did on my first viewing, I still enjoyed every moment and was again genuinely moved by it.
The story is relatively simple. The enjoyment, I think, for me, is largely visual. The cinematography is gorgeous; there's something magical about shooting in the snow. (Remember that other spectacular Julie Christie film, Dr. Zhivago.) The two stars, of course, are in their prime and both beautiful to watch. They both inhabit their roles perfectly. The secondary characters are well defined and well played;
Altmann keeps them from falling into stock types.
The music, from Leonard Cohen's smash first album, which came out prior to the film, perfectly enhances the magical, bittersweet, terribly sad but beautiful mood of the film. The combination of Cohen's voice and the snow falling on the rough wooden buildings makes a kind of poetry not often seen in film.
The High Priestess of Film Reviewing, Pauline Kael, has called this film a classic and I totally agree.
Unforgettable portrayal of a time and place long gone August 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I saw this movie in the theatre many years ago, my first exposure to Robert Altman's fluid style. The movie is a portrait - the cinematography is beautiful, it left me with the same feelings I get while looking at great photographs. I was stunned by the dark mood the movie creates and by some of my feelings, especially my shock at the central murder scene on the bridge.
I thought Keith Carradine's role as the cowboy is the best acting in this film, and if you watch him play Bill Hickok in Deadwood, you'll hardly believe you're seeing the same actor, so great are his talents.
This movie has remained on my all-time favourites list since 1971. But you will not find "excitement" or "action" here. It's simply an exceptional portrait of a special time and place.
One of Altman's very best June 20, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
McCabe and Mrs. Miller, with Leonard Cohen's soundtrack, is absolutely one of the best movies ever from Robert Altman. Imaginative, great script, the talk-over breakthrough realism and, of course, the story line and the fabulous Julie Christie combine to make this one any movie lover should not miss.
 Interesting, but not Altman's strongest. May 30, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)
I've never much gotten along with Robert Altman's movies, though I've found that with Altman, as with Kubrick, the farther back I go in the catalog, the better the movie tends to be. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule (Altman was thinking what, exactly, when he agreed to helm the adaptation of Popeye?), but in general, it holds. And while I don't seem to have found McCabe and Mrs. Miller the be-all and end-all of film as some people have, it was certainly an enjoyable romp, if discomfiting at times.
McCabe (Warren Beatty, in by far the best performance I've seen from him) is an entrepreneur with a shady past who arrives in a logging town one winter looking to set up a brothel. He is soon joined by Constance Miller (Julie Christie), a madam with a lot more business sense than McCabe has. The two of them, working together, quickly grow their business into the premier economic attraction in tiny Presbyterian Church, Washington. Unfortunately, as attractions will do, it attracts. And some of the folks it attracts are the wrong kinds of folks, who would like to have that business for themselves. McCabe's flighty idealism and Miller's hard-headed pragmatism clash, even in the face of a common enemy.
This is not your momma's western; if John Wayne hated High Noon, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall the first time he saw this! No hookers with a heart of gold here, no square-jawed heroes, none of the usual western cliches anywhere in sight. That by itself makes this an interesting movie, but Altman ups the ante with his directing ability, which was-- at least in the early seventies-- prodigious indeed (viz. M*A*S*H). This is a western that just kind of muddles through, for the most part, with a climax that's alternately amusing and horrifying (not necessarily because of the actions taking place, but because of the lack of every emotion we expect to see from both the good guys and the bad guys), some solid characters, and a few chuckles here and there. I liked it. ***
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