McCabe And Mrs. Miller (1971)

A dreamer (Warren Beatty) wanders into a mining town in the Pacific Northwest and it isn't long before his acumen has him building a saloon and a brothel in anticipation of a growing town. When he partners with a whore (Julie Christie) and successfully builds a thriving whorehouse, it's only a matter of time before a powerful mining company wants a piece of the action. Based on the novel MCCABE by Edmund Naughton and directed by Robert Altman. This elegiac western is something to behold! Altman creates a western that feels like this was what it was really like in the early 1900s. It's not glamorized or romanticized yet there's still a dreamy romanticism hovering around it, almost against its will. In some ways, it's a brutal western but without the slight sadism that a Peckinpah might have brought to it. Altman populates the film with great character actors with great character faces and despite being deglamorized, Beatty and Christie are more movie stars than ever. They compel us to watch them. Stunningly shot by Vilmos Zsigmond with a lovely song score by Leonard Cohen, Altman turns western (and film) conventions on its ear yet still manages to furnish us with an intense, impeccable gunfight in the snow at the end. With Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, Rene Auberjonois, Michael Murphy and William Devane.