MOVIEmeter
SEE RANK
Down 549 this week

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

 -  Drama | Western  -  24 June 1971 (USA)
7.6
Your rating:
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -/10 X  
Ratings: 7.6/10 from 11,125 users  
Reviews: 102 user | 71 critic

A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Old West mining town, and their enterprise thrives until a large corporation arrives on the scene.

Director:

Writers:

(novel), (screenplay), 1 more credit »
Watch Trailer
0Check in
0Share...

Related News

Robert Altman Dies
| WENN

User Lists

Related lists from IMDb users

a list of 2364 titles created 4 months ago
 
a list of 10000 titles created 2 months ago
 
a list of 1418 titles created 10 months ago
 
a list of 1006 titles created 7 months ago
 
a list of 1356 titles created 3 days ago
 

Connect with IMDb


Share this Rating

Title: McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) on IMDb 7.6/10

Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

Take The Quiz!

Test your knowledge of McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 1 win & 2 nominations. See more awards »

Videos

Photos

Learn more

People who liked this also liked... 

Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X  

A mute gunslinger faces off against a gang of bounty hunters in the great blizzard of 1899, and a grim, tense struggle unfolds.

Director: Sergio Corbucci
Stars: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Klaus Kinski, Frank Wolff
Unforgiven (1992)
Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.3/10 X  

Retired Old West gunslinger William Munny reluctantly takes on one last job, with the help of his old partner and a young man.

Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman
High Noon (1952)
Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.2/10 X  

A marshall, personally compelled to face a returning deadly enemy, finds that his own town refuses to help him.

Director: Fred Zinnemann
Stars: Gary Cooper, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges
Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.8/10 X  

A Western retelling the tale of the Shoot-out at the OK Corral.

Director: John Ford
Stars: Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature
Hud (1963)
Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.9/10 X  

Hud Bannon is a ruthless young man who tarnishes everything and everyone he touches. Hud represents the perfect embodiment of alienated youth, out for kicks with no regard for the ... See full summary »

Director: Martin Ritt
Stars: Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal
The Shootist (1976)
Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.6/10 X  

A dying gunfighter spends his last days looking for a way to die with a minimum of pain and a maximum of dignity.

Director: Don Siegel
Stars: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard
Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X  

A fiercely independent cowboy arranges to have himself locked up in jail in order to then escape with an old friend who has been sentenced to the penitentiary.

Director: David Miller
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau
True Grit (2010)
Adventure | Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.8/10 X  

A tough U.S. Marshal helps a stubborn young woman track down her father's murderer.

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon
Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.5/10 X  

Tom Logan is a horse thief. Rancher David Braxton has horses, and a daughter, worth stealing. But Braxton has just hired Lee Clayton, an infamous "regulator", to hunt down the horse thieves... See full summary »

Director: Arthur Penn
Stars: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid
Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.7/10 X  

Notorious gunfighter Jimmy Ringo rides into town to find his true love, who doesn't want to see him. He hasn't come looking for trouble, but trouble finds him around every corner.

Director: Henry King
Stars: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell
The Cowboys (1972)
Certificate: GP Adventure | Comedy | Drama
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.2/10 X  

When his cattle drivers abandon him for the gold fields, rancher Wil Andersen is forced to take on a collection of young boys as his drivers in order to get his herd to market in time to ... See full summary »

Director: Mark Rydell
Stars: John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Browne, Bruce Dern
Bad Company (1972)
Drama | Western
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7/10 X  

A god-fearing Ohio boy dodging the Civil War draft arrives in Jefferson City where he joins up with a hardscrabble group of like runaways heading west.

Director: Robert Benton
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Barry Brown, Jim Davis
Edit

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
...
...
...
Sheehan
...
The Lawyer
...
Smalley
...
Mr. Elliott
...
Bart Coyle
...
Ida Coyle
...
Cowboy
...
Sears
Antony Holland ...
Hollander
Hugh Millais ...
Butler
Manfred Schulz ...
Kid
Jace Van Der Veen ...
Breed (as Jace Vander Veen)
Jackie Crossland ...
Lily
Edit

Storyline

Set in winter in the Old West. Charismatic but dumb John McCabe arrives in a young Pacific Northwest town to set up a whorehouse/tavern. The shrewd Mrs. Miller, a professional madam, arrives soon after construction begins. She offers to use her experience to help McCabe run his business, while sharing in the profits. The whorehouse thrives and McCabe and Mrs. Miller draw closer, despite their conflicting intelligences and philosophies. Soon, however, the mining deposits in the town attract the attention of a major corporation, which wants to buy out McCabe along with the rest. He refuses, and his decision has major repercussions for him, Mrs. Miller, and the town. Written by John J. Magee <magee@helix.mgh.harvard.edu>

Plot Summary | Add Synopsis

Taglines:

Purveyors of Paradise. See more »

Genres:

Drama | Western

Certificate:

R | See all certifications »

Parents Guide:

 »
Edit

Details

Country:

Language:

Release Date:

24 June 1971 (USA)  »

Also Known As:

The Presbyterian Church Wager  »

Filming Locations:

 »

Box Office

Gross:

SEK 867,412 (Sweden)
 »

Company Credits

Show detailed on  »

Technical Specs

Runtime:

Sound Mix:

Color:

(Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1
See  »
Edit

Did You Know?

Trivia

Editor 'Lou Lombardo' complained that the soundtrack was too "muddy" and asked Altman fix it. Altman refused and later claimed the bad soundtrack was Lombardo's fault. See more »

Goofs

At 1:41:38 into the film, when McCabe is hiding in the door of the hardware store, a leg and a foot of a crew-member are visible reflected in the window on the left. After the cutaway it is even clearer when the person moves. See more »

Quotes

[first lines]
John McCabe: [muttering to himself] I told you... Think I'm stupid?... S'exactly what I said. Six, six of 'em...
See more »

Connections

Referenced in The Shining (1980) See more »

Soundtracks

"Sisters of Mercy"
Written and Performed by Leonard Cohen
See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

See more (Spoiler Alert!) »

User Reviews

 
The most 'modern' of westerns
13 February 2007 | by (Derry, Ireland) – See all my reviews

Few westerns have succeeded so strangely yet so completely in evoking a sense of place and time than Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs Miller". In fact, it's not really a western at all; certainly not like any western I've ever seen. It's setting is the Pacific Northwest; cold, rainswept and often covered in snow. There are gunslingers but they are more like the professional hit men of gangster movies. When Altman isn't filming through the haze of a rain-drenched exterior he is filming through the haze of a dimly lit interior where darkness is more prevalent than light. Above all, it doesn't have a conventional western hero. McCabe is like a tragi-comic Everyman out of his depth and his territory in this largely alien environment yet canny enough to apply his savvy into transforming the landscape into something tangible, real and materialistically American.

In this respect it is a very modern film in spite of its setting. The fact that Altman doesn't care very much about convention or even about narrative, (it's story is perfunctory; Altman is more interested in 'observing'), makes it so. But then "MASH" wasn't a conventional war movie either just as "Nashville" wasn't really about the country music business.

As for McCabe himself, Beatty plays him with the same laconic, stammering mannerisms he applies to all his roles, (and which he seems either blessed or cursed with in real life), and which actually makes him a perfect Altman hero, (or anti-hero, if you prefer). Mrs Miller, on the other hand, seems coolly distracted from what's going on around her. Julie Christie plays up her Englishness adding another element to the alienation of her character, a stranger in a strange land indeed, while in the foreground the songs of Leonard Cohen seem to hover like warm blankets, cosily familiar and comforting even at their bleakest. They could have been written for the film.


17 of 20 people found this review helpful.  Was this review helpful to you?

Message Boards

Recent Posts
Fake Snow - Disappointed?? BestPlayEverMan
Nothing redeeming streettb
Easily the best film of 1971 phoenix1982
McCabe should have hired some guns SlackerInc
Greatest movie of all time? John_McCabe
Can anyone recommend similar 70s scenic westerns? dbarcl
Discuss McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) on the IMDb message boards »

Contribute to This Page

Create a character page for:
?