Heaven's Gate (film)
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| Heaven's Gate | |
|---|---|
| File:Heavens gate.jpg Poster for Heaven's Gate | |
| Directed by | Michael Cimino |
| Written by | Michael Cimino |
| Produced by | Joann Carelli |
| Starring | Kris Kristofferson Christopher Walken Isabelle Huppert Jeff Bridges John Hurt Sam Waterston Brad Dourif Joseph Cotten Geoffrey Lewis Richard Masur Terry O'Quinn Mickey Rourke Willem Dafoe |
| Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond |
| Edited by | Lisa Fruchtman |
| Music by | David Mansfield |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
Release dates | November 19, 1980 |
Running time | 149 min. (Uncut: 220 min.) (Full length: 228 min.) |
| Country | US |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$44 million |
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 western movie, which depicts a fictionalized account of the Johnson County War, a violent dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s. The director, Michael Cimino, had an expansive and ambitious vision for the film pushed the film way over its planned budget. The movie's financial problems and United Artists' subsequent demise led to a move away from director-driven film production in the American film industry and a shift towards greater studio control of films.
The film's actors included Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey Lewis, Richard Masur, Terry O'Quinn, Mickey Rourke, and Willem Dafoe.
Plot
The film opens in 1870 as two young men are graduating from Harvard University. The film then flashes forward 20 years, where one of the men is heading West to the booming region of Johnson County in Wyoming. In Johnson County, the poor Slavic immigrants are stealing the cattle of the rich WASP ranch owners for food. The Stock Growers Association hires a number of men from Texas to kill the immigrant rustlers and replace the local government, which leads to a violent dispute which is now known as the Johnson's County War.
Reception
After months of delays, last minute changes, and cost overruns, Cimino delivered his version which ran 5 hours and 25 minutes (325 minutes) long; United Artists executives forced Cimino to edit the film down to 3 hours and 39 minutes (219 minutes). Cimino pulled that version from release after only one screening: its premiere in New York City on November 19, 1980.
A subsequent review by New York Times critic Vincent Canby called Heaven's Gate "an unqualified disaster," comparing it to "a forced four-hour walking tour of one's own living room". Canby went even further by stating that "It fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to obtain the success of The Deer Hunter and the Devil has just come around to collect". Heaven's Gate resurfaced six months later in a 2 hour and 29 minute (149 minute) version attempting to recoup some of its losses.
Awards and nominations
Although the film is praised by some prominent critics in the 1990s and 2000s, it received a number of poor reviews upon its first release.
- Won: Worst Director (Michael Cimino)
- Nominated: Worst Picture
- Nominated: Worst Screenplay
- Nominated: Worst Musical Score
- Nominated: Worst Actor (Kris Kristofferson)
- Nominated: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Tambi Larsen, James L. Berkey)
Effects on the U.S. film industry
The movie's unprecedented $40 million cost (equivalent to about $101 million today) and poor performance at the box office ($3,484,331 gross in the United States) generated more negative publicity than actual financial damage, causing Transamerica Corporation (United Artists' corporate owner at the time) to become anxious over its own public image and withdraw from film production altogether. This in turn caused United Artists to be sold to and absorbed by MGM, which effectively ended the existence of the studio. MGM would later revive the name "United Artists" as a subsidiary division. While the money loss due to Heaven's Gate was considerable, United Artists was still a thriving studio with a steady income provided by the James Bond and Rocky franchises.
The fracas had a wider effect on the American film industry at the time. During the 1970s, relatively young directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and William Friedkin were given unprecedented large budgets with very little studio control (New Hollywood). The studio largesse eventually led to the new paradigm of the high concept feature, epitomized by Jaws and Star Wars. But it also led to less successful films as Friedkin's Sorcerer (1977), and culminating in Coppola's One from the Heart and Cimino's Heaven's Gate, among other money-losers. As the new high-concept paradigm of filmmaking became more entrenched, studio control of budgets and productions became tighter, ending the free-wheeling excesses that begat Heaven's Gate.
The box office failure of the film also had a huge impact on the western genre of films which had a revival in the late 1960s. From this point on, very few western films were released by major studios.
Director's cut
Despite these setbacks, the movie was salvaged by an unlikely source. The Z Channel, a cable TV channel that in its peak (mid-1980s) served 100,000 of Los Angeles's most influential film professionals, was the only network showing uncut movies on television. After the failed release of the re-edited and shortened Heaven's Gate, Jerry Harvey, the channel's programmer, decided to play Cimino's 219 minute cut. The re-assembled movie received admiring reviews and coined the term "director's cut."
When MGM home video released the film on VHS in the 1980's, they released Cimino's 219 minute cut, using the tagline "Heaven's Gate...The Legendary Uncut Version". Subsequent releases on laserdisc and DVD have been the 219 minute cut. The 149 minute cut has never been released on home video.
"The whole idea of a director's cut being something you could actually market came out of Jerry Harvey's rescue of Heaven's Gate," notes F.X. Feeney, a film critic who contributed heavily to Z Channel's programming guide. "It's an important measure, because home video, home viewing via pay TV, these things have really revolutionized how we perceive movies."
In October 2004, an uncut version of the film was again shown in selected art-house cinemas in the US and Australia, along with Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, a documentary about Z Channel. In 2005, the original uncut version of Heaven's Gate was re-released in Paris. It was also shown to a sold out audience at New York's Museum of Modern Art with a live appearance by Isabelle Huppert to introduce the film.
See also
Heaven's Gate Trivia: In the famous roller rink scene the band includes a double bass, which was not popularized until many years later.