mccabe & mrs. miller

Director: robert altman

Actor: warren beatty,julie christie,rene auberjonois,william devane

Data Published: Thu Jul 08 1971

Genres: Drama,Western

Key Words: prostitution,brothel madam,mining town,bordello,gambler

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067411/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCabe_%26_Mrs._Miller

Description: McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a movie starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, and Rene Auberjonois. A gambler and a prostitute become business partners in a remote Old West mining town, and their enterprise thrives until a large...

Plot: In 1902 Washington State, a gambler named John McCabe arrives mysteriously and mumbling to himself in the town of Presbyterian Church, named after its only substantial building, a tall but mostly unused chapel. McCabe quickly takes a dominant position over the town's simple-minded and lethargic miners, thanks to his aggressive personality and rumors that he is a gunfighter. McCabe establishes a makeshift brothel, consisting of three prostitutes purchased for $200 from a pimp in the nearby town of Bearpaw. British cockney Constance Miller arrives in town and tells him she could run a brothel for him more profitably; unknown to him she is addicted to opium. The two become financially successful business partners, open a higher class establishment, including a bathhouse for hygiene, and a romantic relationship develops between the two. As the town becomes richer, Sears and Hollander, a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company in Bearpaw, arrive to buy out McCabe's business, as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Shaughnessy is notorious for having people killed when they refuse to sell. McCabe does not want to sell at their initial price of $5,500, but he overplays his hand in the negotiations in spite of Mrs. Miller's warnings that he is underestimating the violence that will ensue if they do not take the money. Three bounty hunters – Butler, Breed and Kid – are dispatched by the mining company to kill McCabe, as well as make an example of him, but he refuses to abandon the town. Clearly afraid of the gunmen when they arrive in town, McCabe initially tries to appease them. Butler confronts him about his earlier story that he is successful gunfighter "Pudgy McCabe", who shot someone in a card game. After hearing McCabe's story, with the addition that the gun was a Derringer, Butler proclaims that McCabe has never killed anyone in his life. McCabe later tries to find Sears and Hollander to try to settle on a price, but upon learning that they have left the area, he visits lawyer Clement Samuels to try to obtain legal protection from Harrison Shaughnessy. Although the lawyer agrees to help McCabe bust the mining company's monopoly on the area, McCabe returns to town convinced that he must face the bounty hunters on his own. When a lethal confrontation becomes inevitable, McCabe arms himself and hides in the chapel during the early morning hours, but is evicted by the armed pastor, who is then shot by Butler in a case of mistaken identity. A broken lantern starts a fire in the church and the townspeople rush to help extinguish it. McCabe continues his evasion and, by shooting them in the back from hidden positions, kills two of the would-be assassins, one of whom wounds McCabe as he falls. As the townsfolk mobilize to fight the chapel fire, McCabe plays cat-and-mouse with the last gunman, Butler. McCabe is shot in the back and mortally wounded but feigns death and kills Butler with a Derringer when he approaches to confirm McCabe's identity. While the townspeople celebrate extinguishing the fire, McCabe dies alone in the snow as Mrs. Miller lies sedated in an opium den.