Knight Scene Study 14 February 1995 Cowboy vs. Kid & Narrative vs. Style in McCabe and Mrs Miller In his 1971 film McCabe and Mrs Miller, Robert Altman uses a seemingly inconsequential se- quence involving two minor characters to tie together a variety of narrative and stylistic tech- niques which, taken together, both define the film as a Western, and subvert generic conven- tions. In the scene depicting the conflict between Cowboy and the Kid, Altman embraces the no- tion of the showdown between almost one-dimensional representations of good and evil, yet re- jects the traditional victory of the honorable hero, a move which foreshadows the film's ulti- mate treatment of its protagonist. Altman also stresses in the sequence certain stylistic compo- nents which appear throughout the film, but perhaps are most pronounced in this particular scene, namely the strong use of vertical and lateral planes in the mise en scene, graphic ,rei ~ _ ~' matches, and unconventional camera work that employs simultaneous tracks and zooms. 1. d. l.t. '~I·"",J In an attQmpt to ~xamU;&is film as a product of the Hollywood studio system, an au- Ito _.I ... 1o~, tL - t~ ~ dience might at first be perplexed by Altman's decision to include the Cowboy/Kid scene in the '1.J;r.. II"" film, since it does ostensibly little to further the plot or to develop any of the major characters. ~ ~~ Yet were the scene entirely excised, the same audience might be left with a feeling that the ,.~" film lacked an integrity necessary in anticipating, or accepting, the film's pessimistic end, which features the death of the protagonist. This is to say that while this ending is unconven- tional, the story line as a whole subscribes at least to the convention of preparing the audience for its outcome. fl. The brief battle between Cowboy and the Kid, on(Some)narrative level, is a collapsing of the longer struggle between McCabe and Butler, one which flattens the complexities of each character and does away with the hide-and-seek, play-dead antics. The Cowboy fits the type ~~ of the clean, moral, disingenuous lead of earlier comic Westerns, who has not been tarnished by 1\ life on the frontier. Even his frolicking in the whorehouse seems more benign and innocent than
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Cowboy vs. Kid & Narrative vs. Style in "McCabe and Mrs Miller"
i wrote this paper about robert altman's "mccabe and mrs miller" as a senior in college in 1995. the paper discusses the way that altman subverts genre convention and ideas of heroism. it focuses on a single scene. my professor's very helpful notes can be seen in the margins. looking back at my writing, i can see i was a big fan of the casual, unsubstantiated assertion -- something i'm much more careful about these days. the body of the paper is followed by a very detailed shot-by-shot outline of the scene in question.
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KnightScene Study 14 February 1995
Cowboy vs. Kid & Narrative vs. Style in McCabe and Mrs Miller
In his 1971 film McCabe and Mrs Miller, Robert Altman uses a seemingly inconsequential se-
quence involving two minor characters to tie together a variety of narrative and stylistic tech-
niques which, taken together, both define the film as a Western, and subvert generic conven-
tions. In the scene depicting the conflict between Cowboy and the Kid, Altman embraces the no-
tion of the showdown between almost one-dimensional representations of good and evil, yet re-
jects the traditional victory of the honorable hero, a move which foreshadows the film's ulti-
mate treatment of its protagonist. Altman also stresses in the sequence certain stylistic compo-
nents which appear throughout the film, but perhaps are most pronounced in this particular
scene, namely the strong use of vertical and lateral planes in the mise en scene, graphic ,rei ~ _ ~'
matches, and unconventional camera work that employs simultaneous tracks and zooms. 1. d. l.t. '~I·"",J
In an attQmpt to ~xamU;&is film as a product of the Hollywood studio system, an au- Ito _.I ... 1o~, tL- t~ ~
dience might at first be perplexed by Altman's decision to include the Cowboy/Kid scene in the '1.J;r.. II""
film, since it does ostensibly little to further the plot or to develop any of the major characters. ~ ~~
Yet were the scene entirely excised, the same audience might be left with a feeling that the ,.~"
film lacked an integrity necessary in anticipating, or accepting, the film's pessimistic end,
which features the death of the protagonist. This is to say that while this ending is unconven-
tional, the story line as a whole subscribes at least to the convention of preparing the audience
for its outcome.fl.
The brief battle between Cowboy and the Kid, on(Some)narrative level, is a collapsing
of the longer struggle between McCabe and Butler, one which flattens the complexities of each
character and does away with the hide-and-seek, play-dead antics. The Cowboy fits the type~~
of the clean, moral, disingenuous lead of earlier comic Westerns, who has not been tarnished by1\
life on the frontier. Even his frolicking in the whorehouse seems more benign and innocent than
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anyone else's. The Kid, by contrast, is an archetype of the villain who crosses the thin line be-
tween using one's wits and being outright dishonorable. It is telling that Altman declines to
give a legitimate name to either character, as though they were mere generic characters play-
ing a token role in, or almost outside of, a larger plot. The fierce defeat of Cowboy, a force of
good, readies the audience to accept the death of the less pure and innocent but infinitely more
complex McCabe who, although the film's apparent hero, gambles and runs a brothel. Butler,
for his own part, seems as different from the Kid as McCabe is from Cowboy. Butler shares lit-
tle or none of the Kid's naive but malicious desire for killing, nor does he behave dishonorably
(at least no more dishonorably than the film's hero, which is as useful a measure as any)) In
other words, the playing out of pure good versus pure evil, with the latter victorious, works to
debilitate the audience's hope for a comic ending in a struggle between the less good and the
less evil.
Relatedly, the sequence (framed by two scenes featuring only McCabe and Mrs Miller)
does much damage to the construction of the pair's relationship. Although the issue of selling
the property or "making a deal" was a contentious one, the scene immediately prior to the
Cowboy /Kid sequence establishes a tone of tenderness and respect between the two which
seemed to be struggling to emerge until then. That tenderness, however, operates within, and
perhaps stems from, the ominous atmosphere that had taken over the brothel since Butler's ar-
rival and cautions against a romantic conception of their relationship. The intangible ill-bod-
ing surrounding the community is only reified with the Cowboy's death, and any budding hopes
of union between McCabe and Mrs Miller are shattered, indicating that the literal death of the
good and innocent is commensurate with the metaphoric death of romantic idealism. The sym-
bolism of allowing the demise of a character like Cowboy to represent the similar fate of
McCabe and Mrs Miller seems at once to conform to and twist the "Western" canon. Altman
gives us on the one hand the good prostitute of Stagecoach and baits the audience with sugges-
IThere could be drawn a parallel between Butler's contract killing and McCabe's indirectcontract sex, and it is because of this parallel (and others) that I'm reluctant to paint Butler asless honorable than McCabe. McCabe does, after all, attempt to connive his way out of a fight,shoot at least one man in the back, and play dead to trick and kill his enemy.
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tions of a Stagecoach-like comic ending, but then takes this away when he presents the likable
but flawed McCabe as a moral match to Cowboy, and kills both men, leaving the heroine to
spend her days drugged and alone.
On less complicated narrative levels, the sequence establishes the direct bodily threat
to McCabe, irrespective of its symbolic effects on his relationship with Mrs Miller and the
achievement of the American frontier dream. Before Cowboy's killing, the only ill will Butler
directed at him was to "get on the bridge" before he got angry, which turned out to be only a
half-serious threat. If Butler had been alone, perhaps the nature of the apprehension would
have been different, as well. The random, dishonorable, sheer malicious nature of the Kid's at-
tack on cowboy instills the fear that a hero's death can occur without a justifiable reason, and
the Kid could have easily shot McCabe as a minor figure like Cowboy. This attitude grows
stronger when considering the behavior of Sheehan who, too scared to act, stares numbly at the
precipitous events leading to Cowboy's death. McCabe's community seems hopelessly devoid of
heroes, or even men of bravery who can stand up to men like Butler, or even gun-toting children
like the Kid. Only McCabe, "a leading member of the community," has any fortitude, and even
he tries to back down. Cowboy's demise, then, suggests not only the fate of McCabe in particu-d?~JL. 1\
lar, but of an entire community of men too innocent, stunned, or nice to object to injustice. This
suggestion extends to the identity of the men as men, as well. When the two prostitutes joke
about the diminutive size of Cowboy's genitals, they humble the man who considered himself
virile enough to take all the women in the house. This matches the other men of the town who,
"amongst themselves, are strong and manly, but cower in front of ~ outsider like Butler, whose
masculinity is apparent to all. When one of McCabe's friends reports on the arrival of Butler,
nearly the first thing he mentions is the exceptional size of the killer. "He must be near seven
feet tall." McCabe's reaction is to ask to speak with him, but Butler says "There's nothing to
talk about" and that no deals can be made with him. The other prominent men in the film~
(Sheehan, Sears, the Lawyer, Hollander) continually try to make deal, to talk their way intoII
or out of something with McCabe, but Butler refuses McCabe's offer to deal, preferring instead to
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bargain with the arguably more masculine method of gunfighting. Appropriately, Cowboy
first arrives in town during a funeral, signaling perhaps the obsolescence of himself and men
like h;m. / Hf( fMw, 7/(..7'/"': ~;j, ~~~.-
On perhaps the lowest narrative level, the killing of Cowboy serves as an action se-""-"--
quence, a tension-building series of events to hold the audience's attention. The previous mo-
ment of real tension in the film came during the confused bludgeoning of an insulted man, but the
lighting was so dim and the justification so scant, the scene served only to show the effects of an
isolated society coiled in upon itself. The introduction of foreign elements, particularly nefari-
ous ones, helped to pick up one part of the plot, and though seemingly detached during the
Cowboy /Kid sequence, build a greater sense of apprehension as the film neared its final conflict
and conclusion.
In this way, ~s in several others,)...1cCabe and Mrs Miller can be read as a generic prod-
uct, albeit an exceptional one, of the Hollywood studio system, in that it conforms to a variety
of conventions, including the appropriate episodes of tension and resolution placed strategi-
cally throughout the film. As such, the narrative of the film intertwines with its style.
Altman takes this convergence a step beyond most other genre films by engaging in a kind of
stylistic foreshadowing that cues the audience to certain implicit and explicit aspects of subse-
quent narrative. For example, when Altman opens a scene with a ceramic jug sliding across ice,
we have yet to have any idea what awaits cowboy, but the image creates, or hints at, a tension,
an impending crisis. As the next graphically matches the Kid's face with the now-still bottle,
we might infer that he is to a figure in the tension, and this is confirmed when the Kid fires
again at the jug but the sound reverberates as we see Cowboy riding his horse towards the
bridge. There is ~e in-':he narr~~wboy approa~ that might lead us to believe
conflict lies ahead, but Altman's use of graphic matching and unconventional shots such as one
of the slipping jug, which eventually is shot into the water, pushes the reader to uneasiness 1\
This, combined with subtle elements of the narrative, such as the Kid's arguing that "The trick
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is to make it float," cleverly prepare the audience for the Kid making the Cowboy float, an ef-
fect which stylistically matches the floating jug.
Altman extends this foreshadowing further by assigning Cowboy, the Kid, and McCabe
similar deaths. Cowboy is shot, falls into freezing water, and floats; the Kid is shot and fall s
into water; McCabe is shot and freezes, covered in snow. Even Butler, who also is buried in
snow, is graphically matched with a patch of black ice while Cowboy begins to sink underwa-
ter. Again, Altman presents these events in a style which overlaps with the narrative to give
the film a remarkable cohesion. Similarly, Altman uses a similar track/zoom technique to
frame McCabe, Miller, and Butler at different moments, an effort that suggests shared qualities
among the three, one of which might be a feeling of emptiness or despair. The track/zoom on
Butler during the gunfight and the track to the extreme close-up of Mrs Miller's eye in the
film's closing shot suggest differing kinds of hollow pain.
If Altman employs tracks and zooms to convey an aspect of a certain character, he also
uses lateral and vertical planes to frame his characters in their environments. The Kid, inter-
sected by bright horizontal beams conflicts with the Cowboy's setting of vertical ropes. For the
first moments of their interaction, we see only laterally-bound Kid and vertically-bordered
Cowboy, each centered in frame, and are clued that the two will fall into conflict. When the
Kid enters Cowboy's space, he competes for primacy over the center of the frame and the verti-
cal plane. The tension increases, until Cowboy is shot, and we see him for an instant framed
with a diagonal rope cutting across his face. Three shots later, Cowboy floats in a muddled
mass of water, ice, and leather, free of lines and planes. The Kid, meanwhile, remains as he
has been, framed in the right angles of the bridge.
The manipulation of planes and graphic matches occurs throughout the film, but it is in
the Cowboy/Kid sequence that Altman unites narrative and stylistic strains to produce a work~
that defies and accepts generic convention. McCabe and Mrs Miller portrays a relatively hope-A
less picture of a community that has lost touch with bravery and surrendered honor as an ap-
propriate means of dealing with a misanthropic world. While many other Western/Frontier