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Select media
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Stills must not be reproduced, copied or downloaded in any way.
Film details
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Featuring
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Director
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Country
USA
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Year
1971
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Genre
Western
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Type
Film
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Category
Fiction
Alternative titles
- The Presbyterian Church Wager Working
- McCabe Alternative
- McCabe and Mistress Miller Alternative
Introduction
“McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a beautiful pipe dream of a movie – a fleeting, almost diaphanous vision of what frontier life might have been.”
Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, 1971
Robert Altman made a run of films in the early seventies that reacted against the staid conventions of Hollywood genres. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is his anti-western, a film that questions the heroic pioneering myths perpetuated in classic cowboy movies.
Set in a snow-covered Pacific Northwest rather than the dusty plains of genre tradition, it casts Beatty as the vainglorious cardsharp McCabe, an anti-heroic knave who goes into business with (and falls for) opium-addicted prostitute Constance Miller (Christie).
Typically for Altman, the dialogue is often overlapping or indistinct, creating a naturalistic impression of conversations overheard. With songs by Leonard Cohen and hazy, sepia-like widescreen photography by Hungarian Vilmos Zsigmond, the result is a beguilingly dreamlike vision of times past, texturally unique in the history of the western.
Altman returned for another revisionist debunking of Wild West mythology with Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976).
Cast & Credits
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Cast
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John Q. McCabe
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Mrs Constance Miller
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Patrick Sheehan
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Dog Butler, the killer
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Smalley
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Ida Coyle
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Mr Elliott, the priest
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Gene Sears
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cowboy with the big hat
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Clement Samuels, the lawyer
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Bart Coyle
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Ernie Hollander
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Kid, the killer
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Breed, the killer
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Lily Two-for-One, Bear-Paw whore
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Pinto Kate, Bear-Paw whore
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Mighty Alma, Bear-Paw whore
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Archer
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Blanche, the whore
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Birdie, the whore
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Eunice, the whore
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Maisie, the whore
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Ruth, the whore
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Jeremy Berg, McCabe's people
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bartender, McCabe's people
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Riley Quinn, McCabe's people
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town drunk, Sheehan's people
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bartender, Sheehan's people
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Shorty Dunn, Sheehan's people
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Mrs Dunn, Sheehan's people
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Bill Cubbs, Sheehan's people
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J.J., Sheehan's people
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Joe Sortreed, Sheehan's people
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Andy Anderson, Sheehan's people
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Gilchrist, Sheehan's people
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Quigley, Sheehan's people
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fiddler, Sheehan's people
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Buffalo, Sheehan's people
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Sumner Washington, Sheehan's people
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Mrs Washington, Sheehan's people
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townspeople
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townspeople
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townspeople
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townspeople
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townspeople
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townspeople
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townspeople
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townspeople
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Credits
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Direction:
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Directed by
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2nd Unit Director
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Assistant Director
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Assistant Director (2nd)
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Continuity
Production:
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©/Production Company
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Produced by
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Produced by
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Associate Producer
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Unit Production Manager
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Assistant to the Producers
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[Production Assistant]
Casting:
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Casting
Writing:
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Screenplay by
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Screenplay by
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Based on the novel 'McCabe' by
Photography:
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Director of Photography
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2nd Unit Photography
Special Effects:
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Special Effects
Editing:
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Film Editor
Design:
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Production Designed by
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Art Director
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Art Director
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Property Master
Costumes:
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Wardrobe
Make-up:
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Make-up
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Make-up
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Make-up
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Hairdresser
Titles:
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Title Design
Music:
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Songs by
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Fiddler
Sound:
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Sound Mixer
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Sound by
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Sound by
Consultant:
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Research
Publicity:
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Publicist
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The Greatest Films of All Time 2012
Voted for by 5 critics and 2 directors.