The year is 1901, and former gambler John Q. McCabe (Warren Beatty) opens a brothel in an unwelcoming hamlet. With the arrival of the worldly-wise Constance Miller (Julie Christie), the business starts to prosper. But it is only a matter of time before they must face a group of gunmen hired by the local mining company. An elegiac “autumnal” anti-western, this legendary film features Leonard Cohen’s haunting ballads and cinematography evocative of period photographs, while multi-layered sound and the way the characters are filmed serve to heighten the realism of this major work by director Robert Altman, the centenary of whose birth we commemorate this year.
Robert Altman (1925, Kansas City – 2006, Los Angeles) has numerous television shows and upwards of 40 films to his credit. He presents a striking exception in the context of American filmmaking for his long-term emphasis on creating intellectually demanding works, a trait also reflected in his sophisticated narrative style. He developed and perfected Fellini’s method of plot fragmentation and the ability to interweave the lives of a great number of characters. In his pictures he analyzed American society from numerous points of view, and uncovered and satirized its myths, making use of numerous genres and their stereotypes with an equally provocative critical distance. Selected filmography: MASH (1969), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975), A Wedding (1978), Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982), The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993), Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Gosford Park (2001).
