I’ve Got Poetry in Me: Robert Altman’s Use of Leonard Cohen in McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Leonard Cohen and McCabe & Mrs. Miller are two of my loves. Here's an essay I wrote for Michael Blouin and his "Film Criticism" class a month ago: 

    When it was released in 1971, the reception to Robert Altman’s revisionist anti-western, McCabe & Mrs. Miller was fairly split. To most critics, the film was a failure, slog, and in the words of former New York Times film writer Vincent Canby, was filled with, “tired symbolism” and “loaded with ulterior motives of pretension." To others, like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, the film was good and their feedback positive. Besides a small amount of awards recognition (an Academy Award nomination for co-star Julie Christie and a BAFTA nomination for Vilmos Zsigmond’s moody cinematography), McCabe & Mrs. Miller, like most of Altman’s films, went almost entirely unnoticed. In an interview shortly following the film’s release, Kael predicted McCabe’s small numbers, citing its mixed critical response and poor advertisements leading up to its release. McCabe & Mrs. Miller’s underwhelming response from critics is in large part, due to Altman’s intentional decision to disrupt the status quo, and venture off the beaten path of typical genre fare. Hot off of the heels of his relatively-surprise (s)mash hit, Altman was in a prime position to helm major studio productions and reap the rewards the City of Angels could afford. Throughout his career, however, which has since been reclaimed posthumously by cinephiles, Altman perfected his image as the token loner of Hollywood; a director who defied the career formalities of his peers and upended genre expectations. McCabe & Mrs. Miller, a western film that broke almost every syntactic element of the genre, was no different. Before M*A*S*H’s release in 1970, an agent of Altman’s discover that another producer, David Foster, had found McCabe, Edmund Naughton’s 1959 pulp Western novel about a bumbling entrepreneur, his business endeavors in a small mining town, and his attempt to defend it against the lawless outsiders who eventually come crawling in. Set in the Pacific Northwest (an odd locale for a Western film) and championing a foolish antihero and a strong, complex female as the story’s leads, Naughton’s novel jumped out to Altman’s predisposition to doubling-down on his anti-genre trend.

    In his essay, “Film Music and Narrative Agency,” Jerrold Levinson cites American composer Aaron Copland’s five broad functions of music in film: creating atmosphere, underlining the psychology states of characters, providing background filler, building a sense of continuity, and sustaining tension and then rounding it off with a sense of closure. Often regarded as cinema’s finest pairing of soundtrack and film, Cohen’s appropriated offerings (described by Levinson as “preexistent music chosen by the filmmaker… and applied or affixed to scenes”) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller might be the best example of Copland’s theory. Cohen’s music ties the fabric of the film together and sustains it, gives necessary background filler when necessary, and most importantly, delves into the character’s emotions and spells them out for the audience. Cohen’s songs and McCabe & Mrs. Miller seems like such a perfect fit in fact, that their unlikely union of pure happenstance feels implausible. A common misconception of McCabe & Mrs. Miller is that its soundtrack, a trio of all-time classics of folk singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, was written for the film. When Altman tapped him, Cohen and his music were underground. As chance would have it, the day Altman reached out to the artist to ask after some music from his 1967 album The Songs of Leonard Cohen, Cohen attended a screening of a smaller, lesser-known Altman picture, Brewster McCloud. In their phone call, Altman, who was also relatively unknown at the time, told Cohen that he had just directed M*A*S*H, which Cohen had missed. Dismayed, Altman added that he, “Also did a small movie that nobody saw—Brewster McCloud.” Having just seen and loving it, Cohen told Altman that he could take his pick of his songs. Altman chose only three for his film, all from Cohen’s debut album: “The Stranger Song,” “Sisters of Mercy,” and “Winter Lady.”

    

    The first of the three Cohen songs to appear in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, “The Stranger Song,” scores the ruffian McCabe’s entrance into not just the town, but the film as well. The film’s version of the song differs from the one on Cohen’s 1967 debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen; where both begin with the first three verses, McCabe’s soundtrack version adds a prolonged Spanish-inspired acoustic pluckingThe additional instrumentals is in line with Levinson’s assessment of the underscoring of music in film, which he writes is, “music at a low volume that serves as a sort of aural cushion for dialogue” and is “...rarely very far from being consciously focused." Where the guitar strumming acts as the beating pulse of the film, the lyrics of Cohen’s songs are its chemical makeup. In verse three of “The Stranger Song,” Cohen sings “I told you when I came I was a stranger” twice, followed by “and he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter” and “yes, he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter” in verse four. In his essay, “Ideology, Genre, and Auteur, ” Robin Wood posits two archetypal figures: “The ideal male: the virile adventurer, the potent untrammeled man of action” and “the settled husband/father, dependable but dull." Even before he ever shows up in Presbyterian Church, McCabe wants to trade his “ideal male” identity for one of the “settled husband.” When McCabe came into the town, he arrived with a reputation on his shoulders and a badge of gravitas on his chest, yet he was ready and willing to leave it all behind and start something new. Within the constraints of the small town and its small-minded townsfolk of Presbyterian Church, McCabe is a big player. When the outsiders come into town, however, his chips stand small in their shadows, and he finds himself overplaying his hand. When confronted by his former life, McCabe becomes in over his head and refuses its call. Cohen’s plea of “reaching for the sky just to surrender'' is also McCabe’s. Cohen tells us he is “watching for the card that is so high and wild, he’ll never have to deal another” and that he is “just some Joseph looking for a manger.” Whether there’s truth to McCabe’s past, it is clear that he has been beaten down by whatever demons he had faced, and was ready to settle down; in a snow-covered manger of good booze, pretty women, and money.

 

   “Sisters of Mercy” is the second song of Cohen’s in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which arrives in the film at the same time the prostitutes do in Presbyterian Church. Cohen’s words not only give the women a rare, nonjudgmental welcome, but they paint them as bearers of kindness, gentleness, and unearned compassion. Cohen’s opening lines of the song suggest a group of angelic apparition. “Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song. Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been traveling so long.” Though they are typically viewed as “less than,” the prostitutes of McCabe & Mrs. Miller are more human and merciful than anyone else in the town in Cohen’s eyes. When Cohen sings “If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn, they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem,” it is an affirmation of the mercy these women bring into the lives of these men. Altman, Cohen, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller depicts the prostitutes completely differently; showing them an ample amount of grace and respect. Without Cohen’s guiding words, the women would be viewed by the audience in a vastly different light.

    The last of the three Cohen songs played is “Winter Lady,” which acts as Mrs. Miller’s theme in the film. Like McCabe, Mrs. Miller is introduced as someone she is not. At first, she appears calloused, important, and hard to crack. Mrs. Miller fits exactly into Wood’s “erotic woman” in his essay, “Ideology, Genre, and Auteur." She’s a gambling lady and saloon “entertainer,” and is fascinating to everyone who sees her. As the film unravels, Mrs. Miller shows a more genuine side of emotion, gentleness, and compassion. Despite those qualities, however, she is at an arm’s length from McCabe and the men of the town, which is made evident through her secret opium addiction. Whether she’s masking or satisfying something through her drug intake, Mrs. Miller is not easily deciphered. The film’s closing shot of her open eye is an attempt at giving the audience a glimpse into her soul, but it does not show her full picture. To understand Mrs. Miller is to understand Cohen’s words in “Winter Lady.” His lyrics of, “Traveling lady, stay awhile, until the night is over. I’m just a station on your way, I know I’m not your lover,” show the town and McCabe are in between places for Mrs. Miller. Like McCabe, she has similar aspirations of opening up a brothel. Her arrival and stay in Presbyterian Church is much-needed, but it is temporary. McCabe’s “manger” of Presbyterian Church isn’t Mrs. Miller’s. For her, the town and its inhabitants are stations on the way.
 

   Cohen’s work in McCabe & Mrs. Miller is loved and venerated so unanimously not because it accompanied a great story, but because it enshrined it. Cohen’s songs not only bettered Altman’s film, but they romanticized it and breathed life into the hearts and souls of downtrodden, world-weary individuals and landscapes. The three songs further the film’s style and mood, unmasks the story and its characters, and moves the narrative along, just like Copland said great music should. Without Cohen’s music in McCabe & Mrs. Miller as a narrative and thematic guide, Altman’s hallmarks of genre defiance and methodic pacing would look more like flaws, rather than standouts. Cohen’s soundtrack gave McCabe & Mrs. Miller a lasting identity and mood, a unique sense of place, and proved the film had poetry in it, regardless of people stopping to listen.

The original version of this essay is in print form, and was a response on Leonard Cohen's music in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller for Dr. Michael Blouin's "Film Criticism" class at Milligan University during the 2023 Fall term.