Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Tuesday, October 19, 1971 1 !__________--__ -- "a McCabe: A transitional Western By NEAL GABLER When it comes to myths, we Americans are really p r e t t y lucky. Poor Europe is too old, too far removed from the strain- ing muscles that got her where she is today, and consequently her Beowulfs, Rolands and Sieg- frieds seem fossils from some raw, ancient past wholly dis- connected to the dull, sedentary present. Our history is more organic. We.have our Old West just an historical skip away, and even a New Yorker descend- ed from Poles can't help but feel that a frontiersman's blood flows through his veins. Maybe that's why the Western has remained such a popular American form. Certainly it has dramatic sweep and two-fisted action, but it also binds us, in a way no med- ieval epic could, to values we like to think are peculiarly American. Put another way, the Western, as it encapsulates rugged Amer- icanism, is history without the blemishes. We could see our for- bears, armed with a shovel, a shotgun, two good hands and gutsy individualism carving a nation out of a land, battling the elements and if need be bat- tling each other, with a f a s t gun and a strong sense of pur- pose their only law. There was no need for an impartial ar- biter because morality was sim- ple, right and wrong easily di- vined: And in this setting the only fatal flaw a man could have" was irreverence toward the forms of honor. Though we're loath to admit it, we've come a long way from that frontier individualism to modern suburban other-direct- edness. Where once - or so the myth goes - gunfighters would stomp down Main Street for a showdown, today most of us would cower if we saw even our own kids being attacked; ma- terialism has a funny way of emasculating people. But if ur- banization and suburbanization have wrought some strange transformation in the way we operate, they have also t r a n s- formed the way we look at our history, especially among t h e young. Fortunately, one of the virtues of having an epic genre rather than a single epic work to glorify o.our past, is that a genre can grow and change as our view of history changes. ThaL's precisely what's happen- ing to our Westerns. Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country with Joel Mc- Crea and Randolph Scott as two old gunmen who had largely out- lived their usefulness, was among the first converts from paean to dirge. For a genre whose protagonists had always been young and sleek, the grey- ing of the gunfighter was quite an admision; but the theme of obsolescence through age gain- ed strength from the undeniable fact that McCrea, Scott, Wid- mark, Mitchum, Fonda, Stewart and Wayne were getting too old to be credible Western heroes- Their gunbelts should have been pased to a new generation, only in Hollywood as in the towns of the transitional West, no one was there to take them. Later Westerns, by shucking the traditional motif of good versus evil for the new motif of :individualism versus indus- trialization, even more pointedly reflected our growing dissatis- faction with corporatism. Kirk Douglas's Lonely Are the Brave was an early prototype of 'he revisionist Western chronicling the anachronism of individual- ism in a technological society. Focusing on our conflict of values, it came up with the in- evitable conclusion: Somewhere along the line we'd blown it. Now we have Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, like Lonely Are the Brave a beautiful elegy to the loss of independence that come with the domestica- tion (read 'industrialization') of the Old West. The year is 1902- a time when Easterners w e r e still trekking out to the coast, and a time, fittingly, w h e n Ida Tarbell was beginning her assaults on Standard Oil. The place is Presbyterian Church, Washington, a little ramshackle town that owes its existence solely to the zinc deposits near- by. The man is John 'Pudgy' McCabe (Warren Beatty), a frontier gambler-gunman w h o cockily ambles into town attired in a huge shaggy fur coat, a bowler, cravat ana stickpin. Tired of the nomadic life and running out of territory anyway, McCabe decides to settle down among the scoundrel miners and builds himself a combination saloon-casino-Whore house. So when saloonkeeper Sheehan Rene Auberjonois) sidles up to McCabe and snivels, "Gunfight- er?" and the poker-player chomps on his cigar, "Business- man. Businessman," we are see- ing the first step in the un- greening of our traditional hero. McCabe, however, despite or perhaps because of his trans- ition from frontiersman to busi- nessman remains typically, my- thically American. He is an in- dependent who has always lived the only people in the film who remain even nominally .inde- pendent. When the hired killers ride into town, McCabe begins to realize that his ingenuous cajol- ery is no match for the imper- sonalization of The Company. In desperation he turns to a lawyer for assistance. A middle- class Populist with a picture'of Wiliam Jennings Bryan on his wall, the attorney tells McCabe,r "The law is here to protect the little guy like yourself. When a man goes out into the wilderness and builds a small enterprise ... no dirty sons of bitches are going to take it away from him.'.' And he adds, "Working within free enterprise we can protect the small businessman and the big businessman." It. might hit you that there is a falacy here. Free enterprise, and for that; matter any arm of materialism, can't protect the small businessman. Quite t h e pany; after all, there is a code among giants. Their salvation must lie in some kind of spirit- ualism. In a way, religion would have seemed tailor-made for the task if it hadn't already proven inadequate up against the Social Darwinists. But as the Spencer- ians hacked away at the dogma, religion usually responded by clinging more tenaciously than ever to its outmoded literalism. Then as now, this couldn't help but discredit the Church. But there was an even great- er obstacle to religion's possible messianic role: as President Nixon is fond of telling us, it was the old Protestant Ethic that helped spur the industrial imperative in the first place. In the beginning perhaps, there might have been a kernel of spiritualism in the notion that hard work will be rewarded by God. Sadly, industriousness soon overshone any spiritual goal, and the building of civilization ligion and Mammon the new god. What it all boils down to is that the spiritual condition of Presbyterian Church is not unlike our own. We are all victims of the contagion. Religion is empty,. detached; and though Presby- terian Church's Reverend lab- ors stoically and solitarily build- ing his house of worship, he knows there will be no congre- gation when he's through. But if spiritualism via God has fail- ed, then McCabe's House of Fortune signifies the degrada- tion of the pioneer's last, des- perate hope - namely love. That is one of the few things The Company can't reckon with. Gamely, McCabe does struggle to reach Mrs. Miller, to make her forget about t h e five dollars she usually g e t s from her customers. The troub- le is he and the townspeople have ,so internalized the capital- ist ethos that they find them- selves incapable of anything more than hoopla. Maybe that makes McCabe a truly capitalist love story. Our young nation, with its mania for speed, went about coloniz- ing the country as quickly as possible. But the short gesta- tion period almost insured that these towns couldn't be com- munities in any real sense, as the Chinese ghe.tto in Presby- terian Church painfully testi- fies. Instead, they are economic colonies of disillusioned pioneers who long ago had hoped to find their fortunes in the West and now find themselves doomed as cogs in an ever-expanding ma- chine. In short, Presbyterian Church, born of exploitation, doesn't know agape. I'm not casting stones here. Obviously, none of us is free of the taint of materialism; but the degree of our sin is often a matter of scale. There can be no doubt that McCabe is an exploiter; he makes-his money off women. His saving grace is that his exploitation, operating on a personal level, can be dealt with. It's only as scale increas- es, as more Companies burgeon and spread their tentacles (iron- ically, McCabe's distributor, Warner Brothers, is owned by a conglomerate), that free enter- prise becomes inescapably op- pressive. You can't love or joke or reason or even fight faceless men. These bureaucrats, how- ever necessary to our expanding economy, are the components of an unshakeable power. W i t h their rise - and let's not for- get that most of us will soon be faceless men - each of us loses a bit of his humanity. Because we all fancy o u r- selves iconoclasts fighting t h e Establishment, there are pro- bably only a few people in high places who will take offense to McCabe's message. More, how- ever, have already faulted i t s style - a crazy-quilt of idyl and cinema verite. Unquestionably, director Robert Altman has ex- ponentially enlarged, the e 1 e- ments of his M*A*S*H. The re- sult is an infinitely more Unor- thodox, and more personal film. I wouldn't say McCabe is more enjoyable than M*A*S*H; it is simply richer and better, a class- ic of its kind. In the nature of things, a film as ambitious as this is bound to overreach itself oc- casionally, which is another way of saying McCabe has some un. evenness. Surprisingly, most of its faults are on the side of convention rather than on the side of hellzapoppin. Leonard Cohen's score is spare and sweet, but it's almost aural un- derlinging. ("He was just some Joseph looking for a manag- er . . .") In the same spirit of over-explicitness is some heavy- handed symbolism left over, I guess, from Altman's Brewster McCloud. I'm beginning to ex- pect Jesus any time a guy with a beard comes on the screen. Maybe it's just too much Berg- man, but when McCabe stretch- es out his arms, a materialist crucified by his own religion, I shuddered. Couldn't we keep Him out of this for once? But it's the film's frenetic construction, and not this sym- bolism, that riles most viewers. Be forewarned: the trick of ap- preciating McCabe and M r s. Miller is to settle back and let it gurgle over you. You may find yourself confused, e v e n bored, but that is precisely Alt- man's point. We are intruding on the lives of people, and one of the real testaments to t h e film is that the more times I saw it (i.e.. the more times I intruded), the more I was able to understand about Presbyter- ian Church. This "organic" cinema achiev- es its effect through a diversi- fied attack. For one thing, Alt- man's knack for casting people See TALE, Page 6 The Visual Arts: A Film Survey RENAISSANCE PAINTING TONIGHT 7:00 R.C. Aud. FREE TUESDAY ONLY OF MICE AND MEN Dir. Lewis Milestone, 1939. Ad- aptation of JOHN STEINBECK'S powerful and touching story about a middle-age man with the mind of a child. His only desire is to "tend the rabbits" ARCH ITECTURE AUDITORIUM Q GRAD COFFEE HOUR Thurs,., Oct. 21 CIDER and DOUGH NUTS 4-6 pm. RACKH AM 4th Floor BE THERE! 4 THE U-M PROFESSIONAL THEATRE PROGRAM USHER APPLICATION FOR THE PLAY-OF-THE-MONTH SERIES NAME ADDRESS PHONE U-M ID No. I wish to usher for {indicate choice of series, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th): 11 Series AB_ "ME NOBODY KNOWS" C D Nov. 14 Mat. "BUTTERFLIES" Dec. 9. "RED HOT LOVERS" Feb. 3 Nov. 12 Nov. 14 Nov. 13 Dec. 10 Dec. 11 Mat. Feb. 4 Feb. 5 Mat. Dec. 11 Feb. 5 Mar. 18 "COMPANY" Mar. 19 Mat. Mar. 19 Mar. 18 Mat. "PROMISES" Apr. 9 Apr. 9 Apr. 8 Apr. 8 Mat. Mat. REPORTING TIMES: 2 p.m. matinees; 7 p.m. evenings This application MUST BE MAILED AND POSTMARKED NO EARLIER THAN OCTOBER 20. U.S. MAIL ONLY. ONE APPLI- CATION PER ENVELOPE AS PLACES ARE LIMITED. YOU MUST BE A U-M STUDENT TO USHER. Mail to: PTP Office Mendelssohn Theatre, Michigan League Ann Arbor, Mich. 48104 Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope to expedite notif ication. Read and Use Daily Classifieds TO KEEP AMEIRICA- BEATiFL Suzanne Dieckmann and Fred Ollerman are two of the graduate students in theater who will direct Showcase Productions for University Plryers. Showcase Productions will attempt to fill the special needs of both University theater stulents and the specialized college student audience. by wiles and now draws on that same resource to parlay three ugly whores and three d i r t y tents into a comfortable little empire. Naturally, it isn't long before others try to grab a piece of his action, and so he is soon confronted with deals- deals which become progressive- ly more constraining. Sheehan is the first to propose a part- nership, to which McCabe snaps, "Partners is what I came up here to get away from." Then comes Mrs. Miller (Julie Christ- ie) describing the advantages of specialization: She'll run t h e whore-house and they'll split the proceeds 50-50. With t h e promise 'of vastly increased pro- fits, McCabe could hardly re- fuse. And in the best tradition of business administration, their arrangement proves quite suc- cessful, so successful in f a c t that "The Company" sends two of its representatives to buy out the enterprise. These intermed- iaries are the new men of t h e West-weak-stomached, foppish. functionaries of the business bureaucracy. They will spend their lives serving their e m - ployer, asking no questions, avoiding trouble, and living as safely as possible without turn- ing into carrots. McCabe, of course, refuses to kow-tow to a business suit, but he under- estimates his opponents. Un- able to bargain with the gamb- ler, The Company readily dis- patches the Butler Gang. These three "don't make deals." Rath- er, their guns smooth the way for the relentless push of pro- gress. Co-opted, they are s t il l contrary, having once used Mc- Cabe and others like him, free enterprise has now plunged him into his predicament. But free enterprise can't protect the big businessman either. Materialism is soulless, concerned with re- sults not people. It will c h o p down trees, pollute streams and kill Indians to achieve its re- sults. Soy in this economic "sur- vival of the fittest," the lawyer's pious pronouncements are no answer. Ultimately, McCabe is left with just his gun and a fu- tile show of force. He can't de- feat progress. What McCabe and Presbyter- ian Church need, then, is a force big enough to combat The Com- pany's rampant materialism, which builds the country by de- stroying people's freedom. They cannot rely, however,,on a com- mercial rival for The C o m- somehow came to be an end in itself; whether it was a matter of co-optation or displacement, materialism became the new re- G.B. SHAW; Caesar and Cleopatra OCTOBER 20-23; Curtain at 8 P.M.! Box Office opens at 12:30 UNIVERSITY PLAYERS-POWER CENTER i i uIENRY@IBSQM Because it's my country. And it's getting dirty. _. That's why. -. i 0" f " U DIAL 5-6290 HELD OVER UAC MUSKE T'S FU- 1N I YG. I MASS MEETING! Sunday, October 24, 8:00 P.M. Union Ballroom 4 4 6 J I I KeepnAmerica Clean. Keep America Beautiful.u=FCO Adver t sng cnti buted 4e. ..... _ _ WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY, October 20 & 21 } DEPARTMENT OF SPEECH STUDENT LABORATORY THEATRE presents: THE HOUR GLASS by W. B. YEATS NOON by Terrence McNally ARENA THEATRE, Frieze Building Promptly at 4:10 p.m. or earlier if the theatre is filled. Admission free WARREN BEATTY JULIE CHRISTIE McCABE & MRS. MILLER PANAVISION @ TECHNICOLOR @ Next "DANCE OF DEATH" Meet the m t alt Batty SENIOR EDITORS at the LSA Student-Faculty Coffee Hour i - _, 7:00 and 9:05 75c Wednesday, October 20 3:00-4:30 p.m. 2549 LSA Bldg. Cider and Doughnuts - CHANGE THE,, MWORLD, (Ann Arbor too!) REGISTER TO VOTE! TODAY'S LOCATIONS 1 D..,.l- , LJal l I .d kI , 2"fl Q.fl I the ann arbor film cooperative presents MICHEALAGELO ANTONIONI'S L'AVVENTURA 1 DIAL 8-6416 TONIGHT AT 7 and 9 P.M. .a5w