One of the most celebrated revisionist Westerns ever made is currently available to stream for free in the United States. Robert Altman’s 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller, often discussed as an anti-Western for the way it turns genre expectations upside down, remains a major title in film history.
The movie stars Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, and it also drew a memorable reaction from Quentin Tarantino, who has praised and challenged Western traditions in his own work over the years. On the Pure Cinema Podcast, Tarantino said he has a complicated relationship with Altman’s film and singled out its opening section for especially harsh criticism. He described the first reel as the worst-mixed reel in Hollywood history and said he found the early stretch so unpleasant on VHS that he stopped watching before finishing it.
According to Tarantino, it took seeing a 35mm print before he gave the film another chance. He even considered passing that print along to Richard Linklater, which led him to revisit the movie with fresh eyes. That second viewing changed his reaction, even as his earlier comments made clear how strongly he had once rejected what he saw and heard in the opening act.
The report underscores how a film can be both widely admired and sharply disputed, even by one of the most influential directors working today. For viewers curious about a landmark Western that helped redefine the genre, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is now an easy one to catch without paying for it.
Source: collider.com
