McCabe & Mrs. Miller

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a 1971 American revisionist Western film directed by Robert Altman and starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. The screenplay by Altman and Brian McKay is based on the 1959 novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton. Set in Washington state during the early 1900s, the film follows a mysterious gambler and alleged shootist (Beatty) who recruits a British madam (Christie) to run a boomtown brothel, later running afoul of powerful business interests. Altman referred to it as an "anti-Western" film because it ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions. The film is also noted for its cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond, and its soundtrack, which features several songs by Leonard Cohen. Filming took place in British Columbia, Canada in the fall and winter of 1970, and the film was released by Warner Bros. on June 24, 1971. McCabe & Mrs. Miller has received critical acclaim in the years since its release and earned an Oscar nomination for Christie in the Best Actress category. The film was deemed the 8th greatest Western of all time by the American Film Institute in its AFI's 10 Top 10 list in 2008 and, in 2010, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".