Set in a snow-covered Pacific Northwest rather than the dusty plains of genre tradition, McCabe and Mrs Miller casts Warren Beatty as the blustering cardsharp John Q. McCabe, an anti-heroic knave who goes into business with (and falls for) opium-addicted prostitute Constance Miller (Julie Christie).
McCabe dreams of turning a mud-caked frontier settlement into a bustling town, but he has hardly begun when he is gunned down by the agents of a sinister mining company.
This is no ordinary Western. Director Robert Altman allows conversations to overlap, encourages the actors to improvise and told Hungarian cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond to use yellow filters for some scenes and underexpose others.
With songs by Leonard Cohen and hazy, sepia-like widescreen photography by Zsigmond, the result is a beguilingly dreamlike vision of times past, texturally unique in the history of the western.
Altman claimed the movie was “less about the spirit of the pioneer than about the spirit of the entrepreneur”.
John Q. McCabe
Warren Beatty
Mrs Constance Miller
Julie Christie
Patrick Sheehan
René Auberjonois
Dog Butler
Hugh Millais
Smalley
John Schuck
Ida Coyle
Shelley Duvall
Mr Elliott
Corey Fischer
Gene Sears
Michael Murphy
Clement Samuels
William Devane
Bart Coyle
Bert Remsen
Ernie Hollander
Antony Holland
Kid
Manfred Schulz
Breed
Jace Van Der Veen
Lily Two-for-One
Jackie Crossland
Pinto Kate
Elizabeth Murphy
Mighty Alma
Carey Lee Mckenzie
Archer
Tom Hill
Blanche
Linda Sorensen
Birdie
Elizabeth Knight
Eunice
Janet Wright
Maisie
Maysie Hoy
Ruth
Linda Kupecek
Jeremy Berg
Jeremy Newsom
Riley Quinn
Jack Riley
Shorty Dunn
Wesley Taylor
Mrs Dunn
Anne Cameron
Bill Cubbs
Graeme Campbell
JJ
J.S. Johnson
Joe Sortreed
Joe Clarke
Andy Anderson
Harry Frazier
Gilchrist
Edwin Collier
Quigley
Terence Kelly
Buffalo
Don Francks
Sumner Washington
Rodney Gage
Mrs Washington
Lili Francks
Director
Robert Altman
