The Oscar-nominated movie Quentin Tarantino calls “terrible”
Whenever an opportunity to talk about cinema arises, Quentin Tarantino can always be relied upon to seize it with both hands. The filmmaker is almost as famed for his thoughts on the medium as he is for his contributions to it.
That doesn’t mean he’s always espousing the merits of his personal favourites, influences, inspirations, and deep cuts that he thinks everybody should see, though. Robert Altman has shown himself to be a name that prickles Tarantino more than most.
Tarantino famously said of Altman, “He didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him,” which was reflected in the former’s scathing assessment of the latter’s work. The Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction creator went out of his way to trash both Brewster McCloud and Quintet in his book Cinema Speculation. Still, his withering opinion of Altman even extended to what’s regarded as one of his finest films.
1971’s revisionist western McCabe & Mrs. Miller has been widely praised for its deconstruction of the genre and stellar performances. Its accolades include an Academy Award-nominated turn from Julie Christie, but Tarantino isn’t one of the many who hold it up as a masterpiece of cinema.
“I have an interesting relationship with this movie because I think the first reel of the movie is the worst-mixed reel in the history of Hollywood cinema,” Tarantino said on the Pure Cinema podcast. “There’s a level of incompetence to the mix that Hollywood never really goes below. Hollywood maybe doesn’t reach its heights every single solitary time, but it doesn’t reach the lows.”
Characterising McCabe & Mrs. Miller as having “a strong level of mediocrity”, he brandished the film as “terrible” before calling Altman “a fucking pothead who doesn’t know any fucking better”. Tarantino even heard a rumour that Warren Beatty may have stepped in to lend directorial assistance, which forced him to head directly to the source to find out the truth.
“I asked Warren Beatty about that once, and he goes, ‘Well, you don’t think that pothead could have gotten that performance out of Julie Christie, do you?'” he continued. “‘No, he probably couldn’t have. Say no more’. And Warren Beatty is fantastic, and it’s obvious Warren Beatty is directing himself. He’s not listening to Altman.”
That didn’t stop Tarantino from screening McCabe & Mrs. Miller at his own New Beverly Cinema, although he naturally opted for a Technicolor 35mm print after discovering first-hand that trying to revisit a film he actively despises on VHS was an “awful” experience. That being said, he “really, really liked it” after watching it on the big screen years later, going so far as to dub the ending as “perfect”.
Just like the relationship between Tarantino and Altman, then, his view of McCabe & Mrs. Miller as a work of cinema has proven to be equally complicated as the years go by.
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