Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out. —Martin Scorsese
Today’s post is a look at two epic western films that purport to tell true stories about how a group of greedy men conspired to kill people who were different from themselves and who stood in the way of them acquiring more wealth. Both films were directed by Italian–American men, who some consider to be auteurs, and there are many similarities between the two films even though they were made 43 years apart.
Both movies are truly epic in the scope of the director’s vision as well as their budgets: The production cost for the 1980 film was 44 million dollars or $165 million in today’s money. The 2023 film had a $200 million budget and every dollar spent on both movies can be seen on the screen. There is obviously some digital enhancement used on the more recent film but everything you see in the 1980 movie is real, which makes this accomplishment more impressive to me.
Set in the American west, the newer movie was photographed where it mostly happened in Osage and Washington counties in Oklahoma. The other film was shot in Montana, filling in for Wyoming where the real-life story occurred. Both films can be violent echoing the true life events they depict but at their hearts both appear to be a love story and that presents a dichotomy for both the director and viewer.
Both films open with a prologue that sets the stage for what is to come, then both switch to a scene of stream train coming into a station that’s straight out of Sergio Leone. Although to be fair, neither of these film’s train scenes hold a candle to Claudia Cardinale‘s entrance into Flagstone in Leone’s Once upon a Time in The West. The 1980 film also includes an enigmatic Epilogue that only needs the protagonist speaking the words “Rosebud” (or some such) to make it more understandable. Or maybe not.
Both films received Oscar nominations but neither of them won any awards from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Science. Both were also long: the modern one clocked in at 3 hours, 26 minutes, the 1980 film at 3 hours 39 minutes and yet…
And Now…The Films
I must confess that I could not get all the way through Killers of the Flower Moon; I gave up on at one hour and seven minutes into the film despite the beautiful cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto, who photographed Brokeback Mountain and direction by Martin Scorsese. It’s streaming on Apple TV if you want to give it a try. Heaven’s Gate had cinematography from the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond who photographed Close Encounters of the Third Kind and was directed by Michael Cimino, who also directed the award winning The Deer Hunter.
I can’t comment much about Killers of the Flower Moon because I only saw one-third of it but I have some thoughts about why, although nominated for 10 Academy Awards, it didn’t win any. I found the movie to be slow and boring and even somewhat confusing. Heaven’s Gate—keep in mind I’m talking about the original film that’s available in a beautiful Criterion Edition, not the shortened, edited theatrical release—can also be slow paced but it’s always interesting to watch. The IMDB rating for Heaven’s Gate is 6.7 and iy’s 7.6 for Killers of the Flower Moon. The Scorsese film, however, has a much higher Tomato rating, which may have more to do with the reputation of Cimino’s film rather than the movie itself.
The Gate to Heaven
Among the many rumors and innuendo about Heaven’s Gate is that Cimino’s excess in how he was shooting the film and the amount of realism he poured into it caused United Artists, the studio that produced the film, to go bankrupt. The company went bankrupt for sure, but did the movie do that or was Cimino just a convenient scapegoat? Steven Bach, who was senior vice president and head of worldwide production at the time the film was being made, wrote what might just be, in my opinion, a self-serving book about the film’s production alleging it was. Anther story that was circulated about the movie is that several horses were killed in some of the film’s action sequences and that this led to an outcry that ultimately affected the way animals are treated in films resulting in the ubiquitous statement in credits of any film using animals that “No Animals Were Harmed…” This certification is given to productions that meet American Humane’s standard of care for animal actors. Yet, as late as 2012 three horses died while filming the HBO production of Luck and while the series was canceled because of that, nobody, it seemed, was looking out for these poor animals many years after 1980.
And so because of all this, Michel Cimino became an outcast. In 1985 he made a film staring Mickey Rourke, who also has a small role in Heavens Gate, called Year of the Dragon. It was not a hit—I rather liked it despite its flaws—and that was, more or less, the end of Cimino’s movie career.
Heaven’s Gate
Heaven’s Gate tells the story of what became known as The Johnson County War and tells, what Wikipedia says, is what happened when “cattle companies started ruthlessly persecuting alleged rustlers in the area, many of whom were settlers who competed with them for livestock, land and water rights.” The film provides more nuance than that statement and most of what happens in the film may be true. Or as Mark Twain once said, “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”
This film has power the drama and sweep that, to me, is rivaled only by Lawrence of Arabia, and while it may seem like heresy to film snobs to compare Michael Cimino, who directed Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, with the late Sir David Lean who directed The Bridge Over the River Kwai, I believe it has the same kind of epic sweep that has not seen since in movie Westerns since 1930’s The Big Trail. If you are not familiar with Raoul Walsh’s 1930 wide-screen film, pick up a copy of the Blu-ray disc, That film has incredibly dramatic—and real— sequences of a wagon train crossing the West that are amazing to watch. It also was a giant flop and set Walsh’s and his star, John Wayne’s, careers back for 10 years before they both bounced back.
The acting in Heaven’s Gate is first rate with Kris Kristofferson in a role that was designed to shoot him to super stardom (but didn’t) along with an amazingly subtle Christopher Walken, here credited as Chris Walken, They appear along with the legend that is John Hurt in a small role and Joseph Cotton in a cameo who appears in the Prologue. Isabelle Huppert was trashed by critics for her lack of English language skills but I understood her every word and the sweet insouciant way in which she portrayed a madam in a house of ill repute who was romantically involved with both Kristofferson’s and Walken’s characters. A young Jeff Bridges appears in a small but important role and nice guy Sam Waterston turns up as the evil head of the stockman’s association who does everything but twirl his mustache—and he does have a mustache. All this drama is played out against the background of Montana’s Glacier National Park, which I think is the most beautiful national park in the country.
Heaven’s Gate is not a technically perfect film—there are audio problems near the beginning of the film but the Criterion edition is better in this section than the theatrical version and you can understand the dialogue better in the troublesome section. Memorably, though, there are moments of extreme power and beauty, such as the Blue Danube Waltz sequence in the film’s Prologue, that’s the second best use of that music in motion picture history. (You know the first one) And then there’s the famous roller skating, yes roller skating, scene that will give you giant smile before it all turns to crap for the immigrant farmers. No, Heaven’s Gate is not Lawrence of Arabia but it’s a snapshot of a specific time and place that is fueled by a director’s bold vision that, I think, will resonate with modern viewers perhaps more so than it did in 1980.
In hindsight some critics have come to realize that Heaven’s Gate is a masterpiece, if a flawed one at that. It’s ranked 98th on the BBC’s 100 Greatest American Films coming in just behind Gone with the Wind. I agree with them and urge you to pick up a copy of the beautifully restored Criterion Collection Blu-ray; I’ve seen them for sale on eBay for 20 bucks. It’s where I bought mine.
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