McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Watch McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) online on iFILM — Robert Altman's revisionist Western starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. At 121 minutes, it's one of the genre's most deliberately unheroic films ever made.

John McCabe (Beatty) drifts into a muddy Northwestern mining camp trailing a reputation as a gunfighter — a story he never actually confirms. Mrs. Miller (Christie) arrives shortly after and sizes him up in about thirty seconds. She proposes a business partnership: she runs a proper brothel, he finances it. The enterprise flourishes until a powerful mining company sends men to buy the town — and when McCabe refuses, they send different men.

Altman stripped the Western of its mythology. Snow, mud, Leonard Cohen songs on the soundtrack instead of orchestral swells — three of Cohen's tracks woven through the film like a third character. Christie earned an Oscar nomination for the role. Stream McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) on iFILM.