McCabe & Mrs. Miller - Plot

Plot

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a gambler named John McCabe arrives in the town of Presbyterian Church (named after its only substantial building, a largely unfrequented chapel), in the northwest United States. He quickly takes a dominant position over the town's simple-minded and lethargic miners, thanks to his aggressive personality and rumors that he is a gunfighter.

McCabe establishes a makeshift brothel, consisting of three prostitutes purchased from a pimp in the nearby town of Bearpaw for $200, and has some success. Englishwoman Constance Miller, an opium-addicted professional "madam," arrives in town and convinces McCabe that she can do a better job of managing the brothel than he can. The two become successful business partners, and open a higher class establishment which is more successful. A love interest develops between the two after McCabe avails himself of the madam's services.

As the town becomes richer and more successful, a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company in Bearpaw arrive to buy out McCabe's business as well as the surrounding zinc mines. Shaughnessy is notorious for having people killed when they refuse to sell. McCabe doesn't want to sell at their initial price, but he overplays his hand in the negotiations in spite of Mrs. Miller's warnings that he is underestimating the violence that will ensue if they don't take the money.

Three bounty killers are dispatched by the mining company to make an example of McCabe but he refuses to abandon the town. The climactic showdown is unconventional for a Western. McCabe is clearly afraid of the gunmen when they arrive in town, and initially tries to appease them. Reflecting back to very early in the film when he's reputed to be a gun fighter (aka Pudgy McCabe) who shot someone in a card game, one of the hired killers (the third gunman) after hearing the story, with the addition that the gun was a derringer, proclaims that McCabe has never killed anyone in his life. Finally, when a lethal confrontation becomes inevitable, McCabe kills two of the gunmen by shooting them from hidden positions, leaving only the third to be dealt with. In a final twist, McCabe is mortally wounded, but also kills the third gunman with a derringer. While the townspeople fight a fire in the chapel, McCabe dies in the snow and Mrs. Miller visits a Chinese opium den.