‘Anti-Western’ at Guild Hall
For those who think the Hamptons International Film Festival hibernates during February, think again. The festival that never sleeps will present, in partnership with Guild Hall, a screening of Robert Altman’s 1971 classic “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the John Drew Theater. Alec Baldwin, the festival’s co-chairman, and David Nugent, its artistic director, will host a discussion after the screening.
Set in the Pacific Northwest mining town of Presbyterian Church, the western stars Warren Beatty as McCabe, a small-time gambler, and Julie Christie as Mrs. Miller, a madam. The two join forces to open a casino and three-bed bordello in the ramshackle town.
Their business prospers, as does their personal relationship (as it did concurrently in real life), until a mining company sets out to buy McCabe’s land and establish a monopoly in the town.
When first released, a year after Altman’s widely acclaimed film “M*A*S*H,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” was coolly received by a number of critics. Nonetheless, Ms. Christie was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award, the screenplay received a Writers Guild of America nomination, and Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography was nominated by the British film academy.
Since then, the film has earned the status of a classic. The American Film Institute named it the eighth best western of all time in 2008, and two years later the Library of Congress selected it for preservation. Altman called it an “ ‘anti-western,’ because the film turns a number of western conventions on their sides,” and many critics have agreed.
Revisiting the film in 1999, Roger Ebert wrote, “It is not often given to a director to make a perfect film. Some spend their lives trying, but always fall short. Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is ‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller.’ ”
Unlike Vincent Canby, one of his predecessors at The New York Times who gave the film a mixed review in 1971, A.O. Scott, now the paper’s chief film critic, has named “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” one of his five favorite films.
Tickets are $22, $20 for members.
On Tuesday evening at 7:30, the John Drew Theater Lab will present a free staged reading of “My Girl,” a play by Judy Spencer. Starring Amy Kirwin and Sharon O’Connell and directed by Minerva Scelza, “My Girl” is set in Philadelphia in 1986, when newly widowed Vivian trades her suburban house for an apartment in the city.
Her search for a roommate leads to Rose, a lesbian who has also lost a longtime partner. When their friendship evolves unexpectedly into a romance, they must face reactions from friends and family, and Vivian wonders if it’s possible to “wake up gay” in one’s 60s.