Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Stranger Song

I watched McCabe & Mrs. Miller again last night and this soundtrack gets me every time with those poignant lyrics.

7 comments:

Chad Eagleton said...

It's hard to go wrong with Leonard Cohen.

Dan Fleming said...

Forget Nashville or MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is my favorite Altman film. And Cohen's voice is the voice of God.

David Cranmer said...

I agree, Dan. And its stature has only grown in recent years.

Ron Scheer said...

Cohen's music captures for me a period around 1970 when such sentiments were the soundtrack of the counter culture. It was a time when the poet-folksingers had their fingers on the pulse of a generation. There's yearning, sadness, and innocence. Altman's film dramatizes what happened to all that - and how fragile those times were.

David Cranmer said...

Ron, I first saw this film in the 1980's and again a few days ago. Everything you said is true, however, I don't see this film as counter culture today. But I do get why it was originally called by Altman an "anti-western film. He stated (Wikipedia here) "because the film ignores or subverts a number of Western conventions."

Rob Gregory Browne said...

Loved the movie, loved the soundtrack. Cohen's amazing. I haven't seen the movie since it was released. Time to take a look again.

David Cranmer said...

Rob, It has held up very well. Beatty's performance, in particular, seems stronger than I remember.