McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Robert Altman - known for masterpieces such as Nashville, MASH and The Player - made a deliberately unruly anti-western with McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The genre, once the financial backbone of the studio era, here becomes a time-critical masterpiece about the oppressive mechanisms of American capitalism.

The charming, self-important McCabe - played by Warren Beatty - tries to set up a brothel in a remote mountain town. But his plans start to falter when the pragmatic and intrepid Mrs. Miller - played by Julie Christie - enters the scene. She knows how the business really works and leaves no doubt that she will take control. An unequal partnership develops - until corporate interests threaten the fragile order of the small community and everything that has been built up is at stake.

Altman stages all of this with his typical casualness: dialogues overlap, scenes end before they should, and the snowy mountain landscape seems less romantic than bleak and relentless. Leonard Cohen provides the emotional framework with one of the most haunting soundtracks in film history.

A film that defies all expectations - and finds its strength precisely in this.