Remembering Robert Altman

All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive. And once any system succeeds, it becomes its own worst enemy. The good things we create soon create bad things. So nothing is ever going to be Utopian, and when I make films like Nashville (1975) and [Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)], it's not to say we're the worst country in the world, or God, what awful people these are. I'm just saying we're at this point and it's sad. – Robert Atman

November 20th will mark the tenth year anniversary of the American directors’ death. Often regarded as one of the few American auteurs of Cinema, Altman was part of the great decade of 1970’s film of the New Hollywood of the Penns, the Scorseses, the Ashbys, the Coppolas, the Spielbergs, the Lucas, the Rafelsons, the De Palmas, and many others.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

One year after the huge success of the War satire of M*A*S*H, director Robert Altman revisits another classic Hollywood movie genre with great results. More than forty years after its release, McCabe & Mrs. Miller still stands as one of the most interesting Westerns to ever get on American big screens. With bigger than life star Warren Beatty, still hot from his performance in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde, Beatty seems to fully embrace the spirit of the 1970’s generation of young directors. While being the pretty face protagonist, he also knows how to make himself vulnerable and fit into the casting of the complex emotional story of Altman’s film. An excellent anti-hero of his era. On the other side of the bill, you have the beauty of Julie Christie who plays the classy whore that comes from the town and lives the difficult life of being in the wilderness and in the birth of a mining little town. Eventually, McCabe (Beatty) will fall for Mrs. Miller (Christie) and as the textbook of Westerns says; you should never fall in love with a whore, nothing good will come out of it.