The film opens with credits running over trees bent with wind and rain, McCabe (Warren Beatty) covered in a heavy, head to toe bear fur coat, riding into the mountain mining wilderness town of Presbyterian Church. To the music of Leonard Cohen, “Stranger Song”, the first building encountered is a lone church with a tall spire on a hill. He passes and continues on to a little nest of buildings beyond. He takes a drink and dismounts, removing his coat and putting on his bowler hat which distinguishes him as polished and civilized in comparison with the desolate scene and its gray inhabitants who eye him curiously as they return from the mines. Wary, McCabe returns the nods and glances.
There’s a truly magical shot of McCabe standing on the rope and plank suspension bridge over the river that divides the town, lighting a cigar, flash of yellow-orange, and crossing. He enters Sheehan’s Saloon and Hotel. Sheehan, Catholic, is seen lighting a candle on a small altar before the Virgin and making a sign of the cross.
This film was a shock to the senses at the time it was made. Before then, Westerns were all pretty much pristine streets clean and uncluttered, no muck, no animal shit, the niceties of life largely in place even in the more atmospheric movies, no garbage with which to be dealt, the clothes that were dirty were perfectly dirty, sundry accoutrements of life and people were presented just so and nearly everyone was American. But if you go through censuses and see who’s working on the railroads what you find are a lot of Irish. Look at censuses west of the Mississippi and you have yes people from established families back East, but their neighbors are Canadian and Prussian and English and Italian and African-Americans moving out West for hopefully a place where they might escape the prejudices back east. I listened to Altman’s commentary after blogging the film and he points out this mixture of people, that these weren’t “Americans”, they were first generation immigrants who spoke with their native accents and who had brought over with them what they could of their former lives, silver and china occasionally gleaming in the wilderness, and they didn’t wear ten gallon hats, they dressed in regular clothing. Altman dispensed with convention, and it was disorienting, the mud, the ice, the muck, the snow, the unfinished buildings. And the flesh daily wrestling through the muck and rain and snow. It felt astonishingly realistic, and perhaps today it would still seem as novel and fresh to one who hadn’t seen it a number of times before. I’ve seen the film a number of times and it is still an astonishing piece of artistry, but there is no repeating the shock to the senses that it was my first viewing around 1976 or so when I was a still a teenager and unaware of how artificial had been the history of the west fed me via Hollywood, though I knew it all fiction and canned goods.
McCabe goes to where his horse has been sheltered, gets a red tablecloth and spreads it over a table in the saloon, the theatricality having the desired effect of attracting a number of men to the gambling table, including Bart Coyle around whom centers a fight over a chair. McCabe strikes a deal with Patrick Sheehan for a $2 bottle on him for the boys, he’ll stand his own losses and Sheehan will make his money off the whiskey the others drink.
“Since you boys don’t know nothing about me, and I don’t know nothing about you what do you say we make this a nickle a game to start off with,” McCabe begins. Close up on McCabe’s gold tooth, he prepared to win, obviously working with a plan, and besides what we gather of his character from his actions, we learn very little more about McCabe during the film, his past never disclosed except for one piece of information he much later concedes, and even that is deliberately vague.
Go to boots crossing the hanging bridge to the sound of a plucked fiddle. The Reverend enters, Mr. Elliott, shoulders bowed, distant, obviously no love lost between him and the saloon’s congregation.
Another well-dressed man comes down the stairs. Smalley, who we’d previously glimpsed returning from the mine, covered with filth. Now he’s cleaned up and in clothing as well-tended as McCabe’s. “You going to the opera?” he’s asked by someone and invited into the game. He replies he doesn’t gamble with professionals and continues on to the bar (I had the impression in my first viewing Saturday evening that he had dressed purposefuly for McCabe). A woman, Mrs. Dunn, serves the Reverend, trying to make small talk about the church, he not responding. Sheehan overhears that the new gambler’s name is McCabe which catches his interest. “Pudgy McCabe?” he asks McCabe. “Gunfighter?” McCabe replies, “Businessman, businessman.” Sheehan asks about a Bill Roundtree and McCabe wants nothing to do with the question, blowing Sheehan off. Sheehan begins to spread the story of John McCabe being someone not to be messed with, that he killed a man by the name of Bill Roundtree but no one knows of him or Roundtree. There are rumors but rumors only.
Shot of McCabe cracking a raw egg into his drink and downing it. He asks about who owns what property in the town. Sheehan owns this side of the river, then there are the Chinese who own no land, and a few others like Smalley who own the land on the other side of the church. When McCabe leaves with Sheehan to look at the bunking arrangements upstairs, the bartender asks Smalley what he’d think if he cut off his beard and just left a mustache. Notable as McCabe has a mustache and beard and it’s felt this is in association with McCabe’s appearance. Perhaps he doesn’t want to stand the chance of being one day confused with McCabe, the gunman.
McCabe, disgusted with the filthy boarding arrangements, walks out, says he wouldn’t stay there if a San Francisco whore was in every bed. He returns to the table asking if they know how to square a circle. You shove a four-by-four up a mule’s ass. He’d been losing before but now proposes the stake be raised to 25 cents.
McCabe, having earned his money, is next viewed riding through felled logs, ground covered with snow. He’s gone down to the town of Bearpaw. As already noted, the westerns up to this time usually had pristine, ordered streets. Via Altman’s eye we get paint sheared off buildings by the elements, chamber pots being emptied, individuals hawking hot potatoes for a penny. McCabe is being told by a man named Archer that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, has no experience. McCabe is, in essence, purchasing some women. Offered one (a nervous, shy, clearly troubled girl), he says he needs two others. The man he’s dealing with enters a room, calling for Kate, giving us a brief glimpse of Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) who is as yet unidentified. “Eighty dollars for a chippie? I can get a goddamn horse for fifty,” McCabe protests and offers two-hundred for three women, who here in the wilderness are indeed worth little more than a horse. McCabe is next shown riding into Presbyterian Church with the three women who we understand are about the lowest of the low as far as prostitutes go, cut to a shot of the Reverend climbing the church spire as the sun lowers behind him, to set the cross atop, a perilous and frightening climb when one meditates on it a moment, the cross borne on his back, the sun shining golden red as he settles the cross in place. What the church has to offer has had little if any civilizing influence on the town. No, civilization is to be brought now by McCabe, at least as he understands civilization, through his introduction of the three women who complain coarsely amongst each oher as they ride, the forgiiving spiritual music of Leonard Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” playing over. And it’s not so different from the tale of Gilgamesh and the giant wild man, Enkidu, who is tamed by the harlot-priestess at the edge of the watering hole.
Altman notes in the commentary that he had heard the Cohen album he later used for the score, had listened to it a good deal when it came out, but he didn’t think of the album when shooting the film. Later, upon realizing that Cohen’s music was what the film needed, he says he believes he made the film, which was done in sequence, with the music subconsciously in mind, the reason for the film feeling so tailored for the music and vice versa.
Snippets of dialogue. Captured bits. The men working on McCabe’s saloon–a building quite unlike the shacks of the town, which will rival the church in fineness–are each noted by the camera as they take in the women. McCabe asks where the tents are for the women, and despite his having purchased these women one gets the sense that in his world he is looking out for them as best he knows how, not simply looking out for his property, though they are an investment. Shots of the filthy women and the men gathering around to look at them, smoothing their hair back. As the foreman tries to explain away why the tents haven’t been erected, a man approaches one of the women to speak to her and she kicks at him, a brawl ensuing. The scene is both depressing and heartening. Heartening in that the men, in the presence of the women, begin to think of modifying their behavior, depressing in that at least one of the women is already obviously half crazy with life’s treatment of her, all three expecting the worst and fighting to preserve the shard’s worth of self-respect left them. McCabe rushes to run interference and sees the women up the stairs to the one finished room. Observing how the women behave with one another, he is both obviously perplexed and repulsed by them. Then the clearly troubled women requests, in a childish voice, the use of a pot. Hold the shot on McCabe standing at the door, struggling with the request, knowing nothing about seeing to the woman’s most base and physically essential needs.
Cut to the Reverend guiding a horse through town, passing the tents of “2 for 1 LIL” (the advertising painted on the tent of the larger prostitute), “Pinto Kate” (a woman with half her face perhaps colored by a birthmark) and “Almighty Alma” (the shy girl). Lil is shown boldly emptying her chamber pot outside her tent in her undergarments, as is Kate shown just as comfortably stepping outside her tent in her undergarments, but when a man is shown exiting “Almighty Alma’s” tent we see through the entrance Alma sitting in a huddle on her bed.
Sheehan goes to see McCabe who is mending his shirts. He says they have a lot in common, being the businessmen of the town. And both Catholic. McCabe says he’s not Catholic and Sheehan llooks momentarily taken aback, something he’d not been expecting. What does Sheehan want? He wants to form a partnership that will keep others from coming in to town, opening a saloon and cutting into their business. He proposes a partnership where they would demand a share of the profits of others. But McCabe doesn’t want a partnership–he came to Presbyterian Church to get away from partners. Sheehan says it’s not a matter sometimes of what one wants, that sometimes you have to make a deal. McCabe says he’s taken a liking to him, but if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass so much.
The conversation is interrupted by Almighty Alma, the quiet and nervous prostitute who’d requested the use of the pot, going crazy on a client. The reason isn’t given. Her shrieks are horrible, soul deep, embodying all that has ever gone wrong with human society, wild and sharp enough to put me near tears. She seeks again and again to stab the client who, in his long johns, bloodied, struggles to get away from her. Enter again Cohen’s gentle music as the woman continues to scream, raising her knife and stabbing at the man who you sense has probably done nothing but trigger in her this avalanche of grief and terror instilled by former experience–and it’s no accident, I don’t believe, that eventually the man is lying on two pieces of timber that form a cross as she continues to stab at him, the cross now falling to pieces. McCabe rushes to separate her from the man, gently taking the knife from her hand, patting her head to calm her, glancing bewildered side to side.
Women who have been so far debased and humiliated can only raise the civilization quotient so far. And despite his entrance as the red tablecloth hustler and the speculation on his having once been a gun fighter, one gets the feeling McCabe is a man frequently stunned by the savagery of others, the inhumanity, working in his way make things at least just a little less bad.
Another day. Enter the land steam powered tractor coming up from Bearpaw where McCabe had purchased his prostitutes. A crowd gathers. The man who had been attacked by Alma looks on, both hands wrapped in bandages. “More whores,” says Mrs. Dunn, her husband replying, “Shut up, woman, how do you know it isn’t Bart’s mail order bride?” We see Mrs. Miller and behind her a woman cloaked in black, her back still to us. Bart runs to meet Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Miller tells Ida (the woman in black) she believes that this is for her. Bart, who has been shown in earlier scenes as having a bit of a temper, proud of his acquisition, walking with the assist of his cane, excitedly takes away his mail-order bride to show her their place, saying it’s not much now but he plans to fix it up.
As if in answer to the scene in which Alma assaulted the man on the cross and McCabe’s perplexity at his having apparently created yet more horror in this world, Mrs. Miller has come to see McCabe. She looks out the unfinished saloon at the tents of the three prostitutes. Before she reveals her reason for visiting, she wants to eat and he takes Mrs. Miller up to the restaurant. Despite her being rough around the edges in manner, she is sophisticated for the area and already men are at Sheehan’s talking about how you can tell a genteel lady by the way she walks The fiddler playing “Beautiful Dreamer”, McCabe watching, she wolfs her meal of eggs and stew with vigor, advising McCabe that if he wants to make out to be a fancy dude he needs to wear something other than his cheap jockey club cologne. After supping, Mrs. Miller proposes her deal. She tells McCabe he knows nothing about running a whore house, but he stands to make a lot of money and if he builds a whore house for her she’ll pay him back for it and give him half the proceeds of the house besides. When he protests he has a whore house she says not hardly. That she’ll run one with class girls, clean linen and proper hygiene. When he says that’s a bit genteel for his clients, she says that once they get a taste for it they’ll want more.
Does he know how to tell if a woman’s had her monthly? And how to keep a good whore from sitting around and thinking, because given the time to sit around and think she’ll come to religion, “because that’s what she was born with” and next thing thing they’ll be filling the church instead of his pockets with money.
What would be Mrs. Miller’s choice of religion if given the chance to sit around the think, is the question that comes to mind.
Next scene is a drunk McCabe mumbling something about not taking a bath, belching and burping, belching and burping. Cut to a bathtub being rolled into the whore house he’s building for Mrs. Miller and some of the men complaining about the prospect of bathing. The men ask McCabe to query Mrs. Miller when the women are arriving and he bristles, responding that he’s the one in charge, not Mrs. Miller. Still, he then goes to see Mrs. Miller who is reading and playing a music box in her room, she not answering her door, smiling as he demands to know when are the girls coming in from Seattle?
A wagon arrives with a well-dressed African-American couple (Sumner Washington, the barber, and Mrs. Washington) riding in front and Mrs. Miller’s women walking behind in the rain, their wagon having broken down. The Reverend, from the church’s stairs, gazes down at the arrivals. McCabe’s women now servants in Mrs. Miller’s establishment, she calls Lil to see her beautiful girls, bedraggled with the rain, then sends her off to prepare a warm bath for them. While the women bathe, men in the saloon talk about how one of the girls is a Chinese Princess and how just like their eyes slant, so it is with the rest of their bodies, one of the men knows as he knows someone who paid $5 for the privilege of seeing down in Sacramento. In the bath house, the women sing “Beautiful Dreamer”.
The barber is a practical addition to the town, interestingly seeming to be one of the first attracted as the town continues to carve itself out of the wilderness. The story of Samson and Delilah is called to mind.
Snowy gray day, the church’s unfinished steeple looks over McCabe trekking through the snow to the whorehouse which is not quite finished out but is open for business, the men of the town spiffed up and visiting, participating in polite dialogue, sipping from tea cups. Men who’ve been laboring for McCabe at 15 cents an hour (after working in the mines all day) pay $1.50 per girl, and $5 for Mrs. Miller. Witnessing Mrs. Miller going upstairs with a client, he stalks off.
McCabe struggles over his account books, unable to add. Mrs. Miler brings him the receipts from the first week in a heart shaped box, asking why he’s always in such a foul temper. She points out to him that his books are a mess, quizzes him on his knowledge of math which is next to none formally. She accuses him of wasting money through his lack of knowledge of numbers, of thinking small, while she has greater plans, one day she’ll ask McCabe to buy her out and she’ll go to San Francisco and start a legitimate boarding house. As she sits down to work on the books, a humiliated McCabe, injured also by the thought of Mrs. Miller eventually leaving, walks out of his own saloon in frustration. “Money and pain, pain,” he says, stomping away with a trace of a limp which seems to come and go, reminding of Bart and his cane. Mrs. Miller is equally as aggravated, kicking an object hard with her foot. Even if they are arguing, it’s evident she wanted McCabe’s company while she worked on the books.
Some time has passed and the whorehouse is finished. A large music box plays Christmas music as several people dance. Winter solstice and a time for a turn of fortune. Outside we see the town has grown, it has now a fairly respectable main street distinguished from the wilderness and lined with businesses. A couple of men either mistake Bart’s wife for a woman from the whorehouse or intentionally taunt him with that notion and to the tinkly sounds of the Christmas music Bart attacks with his cane those who’d damaged his ego, a fight that ends with his head being accidentally cracked open when he falls. The Reverend, arms pinioned at his side, passing by, stares down impassively as Bart is carried away by his quickly concerned peers, his soon-to-be-widow (Shelly Duvall) gaping open-mouthed in appreciation of her predicament. Meanwhile, a cart rides into town carrying two unidentified men as in the kitchen of the whorehouse a birthday cake is being prepared for Birdie, one of the prostitutes. Down the street stumbles a drunk and belching McCabe, the two men catching up with him. They are Eugene Smith and Ernie Hollander, representing the Harrison Shaugnessy Mining Company. They’re not entertained by McCabe’s joke about a frog eaten by an eagle that airborne crawls to look out the Eagle’s ass, asks how high up they are, and the eagle replying about two miles, says, “You wouldn’t shit me now.” They exchange perplexed looks that this man they’ve come to see in Presbyterian Church seems a bumbling fool when they had expected a businessman–which he is, a very successful businessman and the richest man in town. They propose to buy out all his holdings for $5500, revealing that they have just bought out Sheehan for $1600. McCabe says it’s not high enough, gives his line that if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass so much and that they need to get their offer way up in the air where it belongs.
The birthday cake is served Birdie while McCabe snoozes in the tub in the bathhouse. Mrs. Miller, hearing that McCabe has been drinking and won’t be around, looking disappointed, goes upstairs and brings out of her closet a wrapped object which she handles with particular care. It’s an opium pipe. As she spoons the opium, we see McCabe approaching with a handful of flowers to knock at her door and she hides the pipe. Perturbed by the interruption, she scolds McCabe for not attending the birthday party. He tells her about the attempt to buy him out and that he’d turned the reps of Harrison Shaugnessy down down. “You turned down Harrison Shaugnessy?” she says, horrified, and informs him they’d as soon as put a bullet in his back. Now one of the girls comes looking for McCabe, to tell him the two men are waiting for him downstairs. Smalley looks on from the side, the men raising their offer by $750 to make it $6250. Still, despite Mrs. Miller’s warning, McCabe turns them down, saying he wants more, while upstairs Mrs. Miller smokes her pipe. The elder of the men, Hollander, compares McCabe with his son and says McCabe’s built up a solid business, now he has a offer from a huge company and he doesn’t understand why he’s turning it down, and that some of his people are going to be very concerned. McCabe replies that there’s got to be a good reason to sell off his property, around the area of $14,000 or $15,000. He calls over two of the girls to entertain the men but the men turn them down pleading they haven’t eaten yet while McCabe returns to Mrs. Miller’s room and brags about how the men and he will have a deal ironed out in the morning. High, Mrs. Miller smiles, reminds him to leave his $5 on her table before going to bed with her. She pulls the quilt up covering her mouth, her eyes dancing with pleasure, lively, happy now with the room, her situation, with perhaps both her opium dreams and the possibility that McCabe is successfuly dealing with the men for a higher price. Back at McCabe’s saloon, Sears and Hollander talk about what to do. Sears wants to give McCabe a chance but Hollander doesn’t and suggests turning it over to Jake.
The irony is the town’s reaching toward sophistication from its base and harsh roots has reached a turning point where a higher brand of sophistication invites a level of brutality which has as little regard for human life as the town before McCabe appeared and began raising standards.
The morning reveals Bart isn’t doing very well and McCabe finds out that the two men have already left town. From here on out his fate is pretty neatly sealed, so what else can the film reveal about him and Mrs. Miller in the meanwhile.
Next we have Bart’s grave side funeral. The Reverend prays, “Oh Almighty God who sees the sinful acts of the dependent on this earth the swift and powerful blade of justice lays open the serpent of the people and leaves its putrid flesh to rot unto Heaven and sends its soul to burn forever in Hell’s fire, accept the toil of this servant as atonement for his sins and grant him entrance to the kingdom of heaven and everlasting life at the foot of the almighty throne, amen.”
Mrs. Miller and Bart’s widow exchange glances over the grave, the widow aware that she must find a means of support, and Mrs. Miller aware of it as well. A strange man rides into town and despite warnings against it McCabe goes down to meet him, assuring that things will be all right. It’s a tense scene, for all McCabe knows he’s going to meet his possible death, but as he approaches the stranger we see he is a country Cowboy (Keith Carradine) who looks perplexed then frightened by McCabe’s guarded stance. The boy reveals he’s just come to town for the whore house which he’s heard is the best in the territory. McCabe breathes a sigh of relief and directs him to it.
Next the Cowboy is enjoying the whore house and three other strange men are shown traveling along a stream, the real hit men.
A package arrives for Mrs. Miller, a petticoat which she’s been expecting. McCabe would take it up to her but he’s told she has company by the prostitute, Blanche, who is clearly aware of McCabe’s feelings for Mrs. Miller. He leaves.
Night. A man dances on the slippery street to a fiddle. Mrs. Miller and the widow discuss her new job at the whorehouse. Mrs. Miller tells her sex means nothing, that it wasn’t a matter of duty with her husband but one of bed and board, while here she gets bed and board and something for herself. She tells Ida to learn to relax, distract herself by counting the roses on the wallpaper, and maybe, just maybe, she’ll even come to enjoy the job. Back to the street dancer and the three strangers (a mixed-blood Indian, the lead hit man in his white goat skin coat that rivals McCabe’s, and the Kid) riding into town, guns conspicuously displayed. The fiddler stops playing, all disperse leaving the drunk dancer sliding about bewildered in the street.
McCabe’s had a particular affection for this drunk since the film’s beginning, always ensuring he has something to drink, even offering him a certain respect when the others laughed at him–perhaps seing in the man something of himself, his own inclination to drunkenness. The killers arriving, the town’s residents flee leaving the dancer alone on the street, confused. Just as the town’s residents will now abandon McCabe.
McCabe is a fairly complex character. No matter how the viewer might judge him in light of his profession, his seeming to live for extended periods on double shots of whiskey supplemented with raw eggs, he has done very little overt judging of others, which will also mean he is ever the outsider in Presbyterian Church, not participating in the intimacies of gossip that builds alliances.
Another parallel between minor characters and McCabe and Mrs. Miller is the appearance of Ida and Mrs. Miller at the same time, Bart even confusing Mrs. Miller for his mail order wife. McCabe’s possessiveness of Mrs. Miller, his partner, coming to think of her as a wife of sorts, has to some degree mirrored Bart’s possessiveness of Ida. More hot-headed than McCabe, Bart was one of the first to fight to sit at McCabe’s poker red-draped table at film’s beginning. Defending his dignity when it was said his wife worked in the whorehouse, he struck out with his cane and was accidentally killed, and now the stubborn McCabe is facing his own death sentence, at least partly through his efforts to raise his status in Mrs. Miller’s eyes, holding out for money, pleading with her that he could handle the transaction on his own, his fatal flaw being his feeling that she must see him as weak with her control over much of the business, and that he must win her respect.
Arriving in town, Ida had ridden behind Mrs. Miller, draped in black, as if a shadow to her. When Mrs. Miller is welcoming Ida to the whorehouse, finding one of her own chemises for Ida to wear, she remarks that Ida is small, just like her, and when she suggests to Ida she may come to enjoy her work one senses she speaks of herself and her affection for McCabe.
Mrs. Miller’s origins are as mysterious as McCabe’s. It’s possible she was once too a mail order bride who found herself a widow with no way to support herself but through prostitution.
McCabe is playing poker the next day when a worried Mrs. Miller comes looking for him. She implores him to get out of town but McCabe says no, that he knows what he’s doing, that he even feels sorry for the fellows sent up by the company to bargain, coming up against a mule like him. He continues to insist he knows what he’s doing, but Smalley enters with the news that these men aren’t here to make a deal. Still, McCabe refuses to let Mrs. Miller talk him into leaving town. Perhaps because she’s there and he can’t stand the thought of parting from her.
McCabe enters Sheehan’s saloon to find Butler, the lead gunman, telling the miners about how in Canada there are rich mines and in order to reach them Chinese are being hired to go in and blast away the rock. Tons of rock comes down and you have one dead Chinese, but it only costs $50 for killing a China man. They could do the same here. McCabe attempts to talk with the Scottish gunman but the gunman insists he’s not here to deal, only to hunt bear (a reference to McCabe’s coat). As McCabe leaves, the gunman asks if he was ever called Pudgy and relates that his best friend’s best friend was Bill Roundtree and was killed by him. McCabe explains that Bill Rountree was caught marking a Queen in a card game and was shot, “But I didn’t kill him.” After McCabe leaves the gunman asks Paddy who this Rountree was. Again, no one seems to know except Sheehan, who is not clear himself who Roundtree was except that he believes he was someone to be reckoneed with, who seems not to remember how he first came across the story of McCabe and Bill Roundtree. Having sized McCabe up, Butler states that McCabe has never killed anyone. Perhaps he hasn’t, perhaps he has–but Butler has decided he’s dealing with, if not a coward, a person who recoils absolutely from violence, who will go to whatever means he can to avoid it.
Evening. McCabe is talking to himself as he puts on his gun. “I never did fit in this goddamn town.” Talks of how he keeps trying to tell Mrs. Miller his feelings about her, wishes that just once she wouldn’t charge him, that he has poetry in him but isn’t educated and knows not to try to put it down. “If you’d just one time let me run the show…you’re just freezing my soul, that’s what you’re doing, freezing my soul.”
In the morning he’s down in Bearpaw trying to find Sears and Hollander, still convinced that reason must solve all problems, but the men have already left the port town not long before. Next McCabe goes to see a lawyer. The lawyer says the law is to protect little guys like himself and that it will be an honor to serve him free of charge. “When a man goes into the wilderness and with his bare hands gives birth to a small enterprise, nourishes it and tends it while it grows…no dirty sons of bitches are going to take it away from him.” The mining company won’t want their stockholders to think they’re not imbued with the principles of fair play and justice that have made the country what it is. “Busting up these trusts and monopolies is at the very root of the problem of creating a just society. This free enterprise system works,” and working within it they can protect the rights of both small and big businessmen, the lawyer promises.
“I just don’t want to get killed,” says McCabe.
“Until people stop dying for freedom, we ain’t going to be free,” the lawyer replies.
So, how to go about protecting McCabe? Do they get the marshal, McCabe asks.
No, they’ll fight through the courts, the lawyer replies.
McCabe believes he follows the reasoning when he says, oh, if this gets in the newspapers and in the court then the company won’t be able to raise a finger to kill him because of the publicity.
That’s right says the lawyer, and tells McCabe how he’ll become famous, having stuck up for the rights of the little man.
Now to Constance (Mrs. Miller) furiously frying eggs for McCabe as he tells her the story of his visit with the lawyer and that someone has to protect small business and he’s going to be the man, insisting he has principles though he’s never talked about them with her–and one may buy that McCabe has principles but if he has believed at all the lawyer’s argument it’s only because he’s talked himself into a less than convicted resignation. Constance yells at him what’s he talking about, that he needs to get out of there and go someplace civilized before they get him. She cries, which McCabe takes as Constace finally revealing her affection for him and he attempts to reassure her that he’ll be all right, calling her “little lady”, which only makes her bristle. Mrs. Miller insists she doesn’t care about him, that she just wants her part of the money from the deal. $1500.
The next morning the country boy is leaving the whore house, all the women affectionately seeing him off in the cold, seemingly taken with him, Ida in particular. The youngest of the gunmen, a blond haired boy, the Kid, misses a whiskey jug while target shooting and protests he wasn’t trying to hit it, just make it float. He shoots around the jug and the ice gives way. The country boy crossing the bridge asks him to stop his target practice for a minute. The blond points out the Cowboy’s wearing a gun and what for if not to use it. He’s intent on saving face before the other two gunmen. The country boy says he’s not a good shot, that he can’t hit anything. The blond asks to see the gun saying maybe it’s something wrong with the gun and he can fix it. He holds out his hand and the country boy finally agrees. As he reaches for his gun the Kid shoots him down, off the bridge, into the river, in front of not only the two other gunment but the rest of the town. It doesn’t matter that the Cowboy pled he couldn’t shoot. What mattered to the Kid was proving his cold-bloodedness, that he could kill for no reason at all, with no remorse, without caring who witnesses.
Night. McCabe settles down next to Mrs. Miller, resting his shotgun against a table. He says she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen and all he’s done is try to make her smile. He becomes emotional, confessing he’s never been so close to anyone. She entreats him to get under the covers, that he doesn’t need to say anything. He tells her he’s sorry–which is his apology for not having taken her advice, for his unavoidable death and abandonment of her–rests his head on her breast. Later, when he’s asleep, she leaves the room.
“And I fought every man for her,” Cohen sings as Constance walks down the street into the night, away from McCabe’s fate.
“…and why are you so quiet now, standing there in the doorway? You chose your journey long before you came upon this highway.”
McCabe wakes to a cold silent morning, Constance gone, snow falling heavily. Somehow he may yet escape his death sentence, or so he must act as if he believes, as long as he’s alive. He’s Everyman now, facing the inevitable. We see the three gunmen split up outside to go in search of McCabe and thus begins the game of the bear hunt and McCabe attempting to elude. His first stop is the church, planning to look out the spire and see where the gunmen are. He enters and looks at the mess scattered about the floor–wheels and the mess of carpentry performed in solitude, a bed in the corner, a pan in the middle of more mess elsewhere. While the rest of the town has grown, the church interior has remained unattended to, unfinished and the disorder seems to take him by surprise. He places down his rifle and climbs the ladder. As he comes back down he finds the Reverend waiting for him with his own rifle, ordering him out, declaring this a House of God. McCabe pleads some men are seeking to kill him but the unsympathetic Reverend is impervious, refusing to return his gun and even leveling it on him.
If we are to take the Reverend at his word, the deity is an insane one made desolate by jealousy and disappointment in his creatures who refuse intimacy with his harsh judgment.
After McCabe has left the church he watches as the lead gunman approaches its door and kicks it open, gunning down the Reverend who holds McCabe’s rifle in one hand and a lantern in the other.
McCabe flees to his House of Fortune where he has one of his egg drinks. He creeps outside with his pistol and as he makes his way through the town we see how it has now numerous small stores like bakeries and drug stores, all having followed the establishment of the whorehouse. Taking refuge in the bathhouse, he hides as the Kid enters and shoots him. The Kid tumbles into the bath, dying, but manages to fire off two shots at McCabe, wounding him.
A fire in the church has begun and the town bands together to fight it, much done under the direction of Sheehan, a counterpoint to McCabe’s lone struggle in the snow for his life.
He takes refuge in another building where he sees another one of the gunmen pass before the door and despite his pain and injuries he shoots the mixed-blood through the glass. He goes outside to find the gunman had stumbled up the hill to die in the snow. Yet one is offered no hope that McCabe will survive, for despite his having killed already two of the gunmen, should he succeed in killing the third, it’s evident that his injuries are mortal. And even if McCabe is aware of this, that his wounds hare mortal, it makes no difference. As long as he is alert, as long as is alive, he must act as if he has a future to salvage.
McCabe is aware of how badly he’s injured. Taking refuge from the snow in a small shleter he checks the wound in his side. Hears something and looks up. A loose mule runs up.
The idea of the squaring of the circle is given by some as the problem of deity (the circle) appearing in the square, or the human. The infinite finding expression in the material. So one returns to McCabe’s question at film’s beginning when he’s just arrived in Presbyterian Church, how does one square a circle, and his answer being one sticks a 4 by 4 up a mule’s ass. I know frrom the commentary that Altman says the mule running loose was a fortuitous accident, that they nearly stopped filming because of it but he said for filming to continue. Still, one is reminded of McCabe’s earlier statement. I’m taken back also to when Sheehan expressed surprise that McCabe wasn’t Catholic and consider the beliefs of Roman Catholics in transubstantiation of the eucharist (a belief that seems to be shared by Presbyterians, at least to some degree).
But “catholic” by itself can mean simply the universal. And one considers it’s suggested that something is occurring that transcends limited knowledge. A mystery.
McCabe decides to make it to the bridge and cross it to the other side of the river. But the third gunman sees him and shoots him from a distance, McCabe tumbling down in the snow, landing on his back. As Butler approaches, McCabe kills him. He’s done it. He’s succeeded against all odds–unless, of course, he had been a gunman once himself, which would mean he’d had some chance, however slim. But this question is never answered, and his past will remain in shadow. McCabe stands, struggles to make his way through the snow as the town celebrates having put out the fire, but finally collapses. The wind blows snow drifts over him. We see into the Chinese opium den where Mrs. Miller lies on a bottom bunk in her house of religion to which she’s retreated for solace. Again, McCabe lying in the snow, being covered with it, the snow whitening his hair and lashes, his face, as if we are watching not so much Mrs. Miller having frozen his soul, but a fast forward of him having lived a full life after all with Mrs. Miller and age overcoming as it does all.
“And I fought every man for her,” Cohen sings.
To Mrs. Miller picking up an opium bottle, examining its greenish glaze. Zoom in on her eye.
“You chose your journey long before you came upon this highway…”
The end credits beginning, cut to the POV of Mrs. Miller looking at the bottle which through the infinitesimal, the pinpoint gleam of light in her eye, becomes a universe, as if she is viewing the beautiful spectacle of Earth from space, looking over its sphere at its atmospheric blue, the glaze glinting earth tones of cracked yellows and golds, and as the camera draws in closer on the rectangular formations of the cracked glaze that has been through the kiln’s fire we see now it resembles cells of blood-laced flesh.
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