McCABE & MRS. MILLER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Heartbreaking Altman on Criterion Blu

Booze, brothels, love and tragedy in the Old West.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Dir. Robert Altman
Nvl. Edmund Naughton
Scr. Altman and Brian McKay
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, René Auberjonois, Michael Murphy,
Antony Holland, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, William Devane,
John Schuck, Hugh Millais, Jace Van Der Veen, Manfred Schulz, Corey Fischer

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Under the big grey skies of Washington State, a stranger slowly rides from out of the wet greenery of a boreal forest and heads straight for the tiny, squalid, muddy little mining town of Presbyterian Church. His name is John McCabe (Warren Beatty). On the outskirts, away from prying eyes, he removes the bulky fur coat he's been wearing to shield himself from the damp cold of the Pacific Northwest. He's all about appearances, you see. As soon as he reveals what's beneath the fur we know this all too well. Wearing a clean burgundy sport jacket, crisp white shirt, handsome black diamond-shaped tie and grey vest, he pops a smart bowler hat on his head - all in marked contrast to the grimy attire of the town's denizens.

In the old west, when a stranger rides into town, people notice. Anonymity becomes just a fleeting memory. John McCabe is a gambler, businessman and, it is whispered, a gunfighter. He wants to make an impression and he wants it to stick, like flies to shit, like peanut butter in the craw and the ties that bind.

Though his entrance is adorned with the surface tropes of the genre, director Robert Altman, like his protagonist McCabe, is all about appearances too. He wants us to know we're watching a western, but good goddamn, it's not going to be like any western we've ever seen.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a true original - the kind of movie we seldom see anymore, at least not from any major Hollywood studio. Ah, but it was 1971 when this picture first rode into town and it was, for all its bold, fresh innovation, a movie that was produced under the aegis of Warner Brothers, a studio which, up to that point always broke molds (think: the first major sound picture The Jazz Singer, Busby Berkeley, gritty dirty 30s crime pictures and, uh, Casablanca anyone?). These days we're more likely to see the Warners' banner in front of machine-tooled Harry Potter movies, the turgid Dark Knight turds of Christopher Nolan and (God Help Us!!!), Peter Jackson's unwatchable Hobbit series. (In fairness to the studio, they have, of late, delivered the unique Zack Snyder and David Ayer re-imaginings of the DC comic book universe, though all of those pictures have been panned by most of the contemporary scribes purporting to be "critics".)

Oh, but this was the 70s, the greatest decade in movie history and Warner Bros. (my personal favourite of all the studios) green-lit McCabe & Mrs. Miller, a haunting, leisurely-paced and decidedly elegiac western. I had, of course, seen several million westerns in movie theatres with my Dad, but at the age of twelve, as I sat in a first-run movie theatre (a 1500-seat picture palace, no less), positioned next to dear Pater, I knew, I knew even then, at that tender age, based solely on the aforementioned first few minutes, that I was watching something I'd never seen before and now, so many decades later, as I sat in front of my Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Robert Altman's movie, I thought, "You know, I've not seen anything like this since".

Of course it's different. These are not wide open dusty spaces with the phallic ancient outcroppings of Monument Valley rock under sunny skies. We're surrounded by mist, virtually claustrophobic greenery and most of all, as Vilmos Zsigmond's floating camera captures the rain intermittently pouring, streets filled with murky pools of water, soupy streets of mud, somber, peppery clouds above a ramshackle village, the soundtrack is neither Elmer Bernstein bombast nor, even, Ennio Morricone whistles and twangs.

We hear, Leonard Cohen.

"It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender. And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger"

Cohen's "The Stranger Song" is not only the opening theme music of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, but its haunting lyrics and melody become a main theme throughout the picture. Along with other great works by the late Canadian troubadour, we hear lively fiddles as source music played by Presbyterian Church local musicians and a series of haunting guitar riffs performed by Cohen. Most notable is the location sound and very subtle foley, capturing the unique aural qualities of life in an isolated community during the latter part of 19th century America, but lest we forget, there is the unique Altman dialogue recording. When people speak, we hear what we'd hear in any crowded room - the blend of voices, overlapping conversations and the only time any words are crystal clear is when we absolutely need to hear them.

Mumbling is also a recurring auditory motif, but brilliantly, Altman uses it mostly for McCabe himself as a delightful character trait. McCabe mumbles - only when he's alone. He's a man used to being alone for large periods of his life and as such, he thinks aloud. (The first time McCabe speaks he's alone, on the periphery of the town and yes, mumbling to himself.)

Yes, this is a western. On the surface we've seen this story many times. A stranger comes to a small town, immediately spots the burgeoning glory of opportunity, sets up a successful business, spurns the advances of corrupt powerful corporate interests to buy him out and is then swiftly assailed by hired killers, their goal to rub him out permanently and secure his valuable holdings for zilch.

Ah, but that's merely the outward narrative coat hanger. The picture is so, so much more than this simple exterior. The heart and soul of the movie is a love story. After all, Altman has chosen to eschew the simple "McCabe" title of the Edmund Naughton novel the film is based on and append the "& Mrs. Miller" to the title of the movie itself. And then there are the songs by Leonard Cohen. In addition to "The Stranger Song" we also get to hear "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady" (all three released in 1971 as a 7" single on vinyl which, I still own). Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) is the gorgeous, classy (in spite of her Cockney accent) prostitute/madame who goes into business with McCabe, helping him wrangle a stable of women. Like the song says:

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.

Indeed, it is the whores who offer McCabe some fleeting glory and solace and in turn serve the needs of men in the village - those who stay, and those who pass through. Inevitably, and perhaps most sadly of all, it is the sisters of mercy who remain a constant presence. Others might come, and others, most notably McCabe himself, may go. The women, however, are ever-present.

Mrs. Miller, the "Winter Lady" of Cohen's song, will indeed remain.

Trav'ling lady, stay awhile
Until the night is over.
I'm just a station on your way,
I know I'm not your lover.

Ah, but he is her lover. Though they are business partners and though Mrs. Miller charges McCabe for all their evenings of bedroom gymnastics, she indeed experiences a love she's never known. The sorrow she eventually will feel is so devastating that she will be drawn to the mind numbing properties of opium. The town is misty, not just with the fog of the Pacific Northwest, but the haze of poppy seeds.

This is a movie that seems fuel-injected with sorrow and though it's set in a time and place so long ago and far away, Robert Altman has crafted a film that is not only perfect in every respect, but is as universal in its exploration of both corporate exploitation and humanity (specifically in the complexities of love) - now, as much as it was in 1971.

The character trait of McCabe mumbling to himself is not only a wonderful "quirk", but it's used to great effect in one of the most moving and tragic on-screen monologues in movie history. After McCabe has attempted to "reason" with one of the assassins, we find him in the deep darkness of an early morning winter, burning the midnight oil. Downing a few shots of booze, putting some final grooming touches to his appearance and slowly loading bullets into his gun before handily affixing his holster, he looks out his window and notices the warm glow coming from across the way at the whorehouse where Mrs. Miller is servicing a client.

Whilst performing his ablutions and the rituals of preparing for what will, no doubt, be a series of urgent encounters, McCabe does indeed mumble to himself, maybe for the last time:

"I tell ya', sometimes, sometimes when I take a look at you, I just keep lookin' and a'lookin' so I won't feel your little body up against me so bad I think I'm gonna bust. I keep trying' to tell ya' in a lotta different ways... well I'll tell ya' something, I got poetry in me, I do, I got poetry in me, but I ain't gonna put it down on paper. I ain't no educated man. I got sense enough not to try."

Eventually, Altman expertly stages one of cinema's most tense western showdowns. The church is burning down. The whole town is empty and desperately trying to quell the flames. Snow is falling heavily. Three armed dangerous killers are on the hunt. McCabe is alone. Guns will blast and blood will spill, spattering crimson upon the white blanket resting heavily upon the ground of Presbyterian Church, Washington.

There is no urgent musical score; only the sounds of breathing, footsteps upon the snow and the wind - oh, the howling wind. And every so often, we are jolted with shotgun blasts and the sickening sounds of shattering glass.

Mrs. Miller is nowhere to be seen. There is, you see, an opium den in town.

Well I lived with a child of snow
When I was a soldier,
And I fought every man for her
Until the nights grew colder.

A man of poetry is fighting for his life. A sister of mercy wants to forget.

Life is just like that sometimes.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is available on the Criterion Collection and includes a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a 2002 commentary with Altman and producer David Foster, new making-of documentary, new conversation about the film and Altman’s career between film historians Cari Beauchamp and Rick Jewell, 1970 production featurette, 1999 Art Directors Guild Film Society Q&A with production designer Leon Ericksen, excerpts from archival interviews with Vilmos Zsigmond, gallery of on-set stills, excerpts from 1971 episodes of "The Dick Cavett Show" featuring Altman and film critic Pauline Kael, the trailer and an essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich.

THIEVES LIKE US - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Altman Dirty 30s Crime Classic on Kino-Lorber

Thieves Like Us (1974)
Dir. Robert Altman
Starring: Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, John Schuck, Bert Remsen,
Louise Fletcher, Tom Skerritt, Ann Latham, John Roper, Al Scott, Pam Warner

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Bowie, Chicamaw and T-Dub rob banks. There's nothing especially romantic, heroic or even mean-spiritedly psychotic about them. They're a mismatched trio, yet their very differences are what bind them as friends and colleagues. Set against the backdrop of the dirtiest days of the depression in Mississippi, much of their time is spent hanging out together; first in hiding after breaking out of prison, then lying low between bank heists.

Played respectively by Keith Carradine, John Schuck and Bert Remsen in Robert Altman's extraordinary Thieves Like Us, these men have doom written all over them. Chicamaw is good humoured enough, but his thirst for booze is unquenchable and under the influence, he's a mean drunk. Even when sober, he's a killer deep down and won't hesitate to blow anyone away who threatens his freedom to dally with dames, suck back the sauce and rob banks. T-Dub is the eldest of the trio and supposedly the brains, but he's a braggart and a simpleton with a weakness for platinum blondes.

Bowie has the most to lose. He's the youngest and most susceptible to falling in with the wrong crowd. It's what landed him a life sentence in the first place. With the potential to leave a life of crime behind him, he makes the only real choice he can. He keeps robbing banks. He doesn't really know what else to do anyway. Holdups are the only thing he's ever really known and he's also deeply loyal to his partners in crime.

There's a spot of hope for him though, when Bowie meets Keechie (Shelley Duval), a woman who loves him and will soon bear his child. We want them to find happiness together, but as a couple, they too have doom written all over them.

It's the depression, after all. We hear FDR going on at length on the radio about the "New Deal" and new beginnings for America, but we know it's all a smokescreen. Doom hangs over everyone, like the thick, heavy Mississippi humidity.

Thieves Like Us has always been my favourite Robert Altman picture from the 70s. It doesn't have the cool attitude of The Long Goodbye, nor the grimy grace and poeticism of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, nor the sardonic wit of M*A*S*H, nor the epic tragedy of Nashville and is thankfully bereft of Quintet's Essex the Seal Hunter. If anything, it comes closer to the kind of muted slice of life exemplified by the great California Split.

What I love most about the picture is Altman's attention to the monotony between bank jobs: the hanging around, the card games, the cold bottles of Coke and cigarettes Bowie shares with Keechie. The stick-ups themselves are not charged with the kind of mad kinetic drive of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde or the pulpy nastiness of John Milius's Dillinger, but they're so low key that they feel like a genuine profession. One of the guys drives, the other two do the stealing. For the most part, the robberies are without incident. In fact, they seem so laissez-faire that once things turn desperate and ugly, the violence is grim. It seems to explode when you least expect it and it's shocking - not in a Peckinpah orgy of violence, but seemingly as matter of fact as the robberies themselves.

The final robbery staged in the film is brilliantly covered by Altman. The cameras are perched above the action, taking advantage of the high ceilings and allowing the superb, almost matter-of-fact manner in which the men go about their business. It's a God shot so fraught with the kind of tension which spells impending disaster. If tension can feel heartbreaking, Altman has somehow managed to do it.

Altman was blessed with securing cinematographer Jean Boffety, who brought a hazy, grainy realism to the film. The daytime exteriors are, for lack of a better word, ugly: cloudy skies, endless mist, lots of rain, muddy roads, greenery to be sure, but always feeling like it's dripping with humidity. The night exteriors are pitch black, extremely contrasty between the big old Mississippi skies of dark grey and occasional flashes of light from a lone closed filling station or sleepy small town street lights or the occasional headlamps of another car. And when we find ourselves with the characters in the drab interiors, Boffety's lighting captures a kind of shabby, somber beauty.

One of the things about the movie that I absolutely love to death is the lack of a traditional score. In many scenes, radios are on constantly - kind of the way people keep televisions on these days. Of course, what we hear are the haunting tunes of the 30s, but best of all, old radio shows like "Crime Busters". In fact, much of this soundtrack is used less as source music, but in fact, becomes the score itself.

Altman takes us to a place that feels long ago and far away and yet, it also feels sadly familiar in a contemporary world where 99% of the population is becoming more poor and desperate. Along with his co-screenwriters Joan Tewkesbury and Calder Willingham, he manages to retain the flavour of Edward Anderson's great novel on which the film is based, but what's even more extraordinary is how Anderson's punchy, yet unadorned straightforward prose jumps off the page and is captured, at least in spirit, through Altman's haunting mise-en-scene.

The relationship between Bowie and Keechie, especially within this context, does have a kind of vapid, almost desolate sense of romance: the inevitability of two young people finding each other in a place with no escape, falling into each other's arms because no other choices exist, is the only romance life can offer. Keechie is a good hearted soul, but she's plain, unmotivated and uneducated. Bowie might well be a handsome young fella, but he's only motivated to steal and his idea of scintillating repartee is when he asks Keechie what the state animal of Mississippi is and upon her answering with a guess, Bowie takes a swig of his Coke and quips, "It's a squashed dog in the road!"

Somehow, all the film's characters are little more than refuse - roadkill abandoned by a life and country infused with despair. It's a story of the forgotten ones. Those who merely existed and had no other choice but to survive in whatever way they could.

When Altman leaves us with the image of Keechie in a train station, patting her belly which contains Bowie's child, she announces in a voice that seems stripped of all emotion and she says of Bowie, "He didn't deserve to have no baby named after him."

Through our tears, we almost believe her.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Thieves Like Us is available on Kino-Lorber Blu-Ray and features a fine commentary by the late Robert Altman. The film looks gorgeous on Blu-Ray. The source has a bit of a battered feel to it, but the transfer impeccably captures cinematographer Boffety's genius in ways it hasn't looked since it was first screened on 35mm.

***NOTE*** The other film adaptation of Anderson's novel is Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (made in 1947, but not released until 1950). It's a very different approach, but just as great as Altman's.

ALTMAN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Legendary Ron Mann serves up Legendary Robert Altman

The idea that there are people who have not seen all or most of  Robert Altman's films fills me with sadness and EMPTINESS.

Altman (2014)
Dir. Ron Mann
Starring: Robert Altman, Christine Altman, Kathryn Reed Altman, Robert Reed Altman, Stephen Altman, Michael Murphy, Paul Thomas Anderson, Robin Williams, James Caan, Keith Carradine, Elliott Gould, Philip Baker Hall, Sally Kellerman, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's the most, about the most, by the most.

Allow me to elucidate.

Robert Altman is one of the ten greatest American directors of all time. I furthermore insist that Robert Altman is one of the ten most important American artists of all time.

If anyone has any doubts about my lofty proclamations, they need to view Altman, the new picture by one of the ten greatest doc directors in North America, Ron Mann, who's also the most astonishing archivist-as-storyteller-as-director in the world - of, like, all time. If you don't believe me, just eyeball Mann's dazzling array of cooler-than-cool contributions to the art of cinema like Comic Book Confidential, Twist, Tales of the Rat Fink, Grass and Go Further.

Mann's herewith delivered a genuinely important bio-doc of the genius maverick director and I'll, uh, go further (pun only intended upon rereading this piece for editing) and happily admit that Altman is a picture that exceeded all my expectations by being the most perfect film biography of Robert Altman that I could ever want. You see, there are three things that always drive me up a wall in most bio-docs about artists and Mann avoids all of them.

They are as follows:

1. No eggheads telling me why Altman is important. I know already.

2. No bullshit celebrity interviews with adoring actors being actors and acting out their feelings about why they loved, or even hated, working with Altman. Who needs it? Besides, Mann gives us something a hell of a lot better.

3. The movie includes just enough biographical information that doesn't have to do with his filmmaking career. What's included on this front is there, to be sure and from the most ideal perspective. What isn't, is inadvertently, or perhaps, intentionally addressed by virtue of how Mann has so exquisitely sculpted the film. And you know, if I wanted to know more about Altman's non-film-related life, there are plenty of places to find it. There's no reason for any such details to clutter this sleek, impactful 96 minutes.

Mann has always been a master of research and he continues this tradition by painstakingly scouring every available visual and audio interview that Altman ever gave and ingeniously selecting just the right nuggets so that we get his biography in his own words. Mann supplements the filmmaking journey with poignant interviews with Altman's family (and private home movie footage) to reveal the more intimate aspects of Altman's life. He takes us through Altman's entire filmography from early screenwriting efforts, short films, industrial films, his first feature film (that I genuinely love, but Altman professes to hate), his brilliant television directing career (wherein he addressed issues of import that drove his sponsors and bosses crazy) and then, through each and every film he ever made - replete with generous film clips and terrific tales of butting heads with the studios, inventing whole new cinematic storytelling techniques and ultimately settling into a variety of independent modes of production which eventually yielded one of his richest periods prior to his honorary Oscar and death.

One of the most inventive aspects of Mann's approach is to offer up a definition of the word "Altmanesque" and then assemble what might be one of the most impressive lineups of guest stars for any such film and present each and every one of them in exquisitely composed and gorgeously lit shots, reminiscent of the Vittorio Storaro-photographed "witness" sections of Warren Beatty's Reds. Instead of submitting us to tried and true interviews with his witnesses, Mann asks each and every one of them one question - to define "Altmanesque". The answers range from almost-predictably mundane or obvious to exquisitely ideal and in the case of the late, great Robin Williams, short, sweet and perhaps what might be the ultimate final word on what it means to be "Altmanesque."

Each one of these sequences are astutely inserted throughout the picture as intros to the various segments of Altman's life as a filmmaker and indeed, act as marvellous bookends to each section.

The biography proper begins, ever-so briefly, with Altman's life in the military. It is here where I'd hoped the film might elaborate and, indeed, occasionally touch upon throughout the recounting of his filmmaking life. While it's not a hard and fast rule, I've always felt that some of the greatest American films and filmmakers have brought a wealth of life experience to their work, and none more so than those who experienced the horrors of war.

Given Altman's early Jesuit education (nothing can beat this in my humble opinion), his turn in military school and, at age 18, flying in over fifty WWII bombing missions seems to fit his talent for filmmaking like a glove - especially in terms of the subject matter he was drawn to and the various techniques of naturalism he either outright invented or expanded upon.

I've often placed Altman in the same sphere as John Ford, George Stevens, Frank Capra, Sam Peckinpah, Samuel Fuller and Oliver Stone, et al - those men who were directly exposed to the horrors of war in a wholly American context. It's an experience that led to films, from all of them, that will not only last forever, but continually broke with cinematic storytelling conventions. While these thoughts occasionally crossed my mind in the early going of Altman, they soon dissipated as Mann began taking us through Altman's filmography, including, but not limited to MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, The Long Goodbye and Nashville. These are films that will live forever because they capture the essence of humanity in ways that most pictures never do and it's not just Altman's groundbreaking techniques at play here, but something far deeper and rooted in a perspective that's very personal and wends its way in to the work itself.

At the end of the day, the very structure of Mann's film addresses this in a subtle, but very real way.

Though I'd not like to dissuade anyone from seeing Altman for any reason whatsoever, I do think it's important, if not even incumbent upon its viewers to have experienced Robert Altman's important canon. To think that anyone has not seen all, or most of his work fills me with a strange kind of sadness, and, if you will, emptiness. Altman is a film that will no doubt inspire whole new generations to seek out the man's films. This can't be discounted in any way, shape or form.

I will declare, though, that knowing, loving and feeling like my own life would have been incomplete without the joy of growing up with Robert Altman, is the kind of added value that allows the deepest core of Mann's film to move me beyond words.

In that sense though, Mann's film is, in and of itself, the true added value.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Altman is in limited theatrical release in Canada via FilmsWeLike, including a run at Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox. In America, it can currently be seen via Epix. It will eventually be broadcast in Canada via TMN and Movie Central.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK