McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
Directed by Robert Altman
With all the recent crowing about the end of the West, it may be time to revisit the last of the Westerns—Altman’s dismantling of the frontier. The town McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides into isn’t through being built, and the gambler becomes its leading citizen, opening a saloon and a whorehouse he co-owns with a partner, Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie), who may or may not find him charming but charges for her services just in case. Quick on the heels of M&M’s success comes the Corporation, which these days may be a legal Person but even then had no soul for poetry. When and where does expansion end? In the snow, alone, with the last contraction of the heart. Elina Mishuris (Jan 2, 7pm at MoMA’s Altman retrospective)