McCabe & Mrs Miller (Robert Altman, 1971)

I don't know what I thought it was about, but my assumptions about this thing were shaped by Paint Your Wagon and Rooster Cogburn and the Lady, so I never watched or even bothered reading about it over the years. I couldn't understand why people took it so seriously, but I finally watched McCabe & Mrs Miller.

If I were in the Old West, I wouldn't go anywhere without a large amount of opium. Think of all the agonizingly painful injuries people are likely to suffer out there alone on the range, miles from any help. I'd want opium and suicide pills.

McCabe (Warren Beatty) sets up a brothel in an all-male mining community. The film made sex in the Old West look somewhat better than I pictured it. Set in 1902. Apparently you could purchase women back then. Beatty buys them from a pimp in a nearby town. Maybe the Mann Act wasn't such a bad idea after all.

A Mrs Miller comes to town, realizes that McCabe isn't that smart and starts managing the brothel for him. She's also an opium user.

Things turn bad when a large company decides to buy the place. McCabe doesn't want to sell so they send three killers.

I mentioned the European revolver used in Thomasine and Bushrod. Warren Beatty seemed to have one like it in this.