Few films have been as vilified as "Heaven's Gate". It has gone down in history as the film which bankrupted a studio and wrecked the career of its director, who only three years earlier had made the Oscar-winning "The Deer Hunter". It contributed to the decline of the Western as a genre (although it was far from being the only cause). And played a large part in bringing to an end the reign of the Hollywood auteur, a reign which had begun in the late sixties and continued throughout the seventies (although again there were other causes). Recently Joe Queenan, the film critic of "The Guardian", named it as the worst film ever made.
Was he serious? Could Cimino really have gone from Oscar-winning whizz-kid to Ed Wood in just three short years? The answer is no. Certainly, the decision to make "Heaven's Gate" must rank among the worst business decisions ever made, but critics should beware of judging a film solely on its profit-and-loss account.
The film is set in Wyoming in the 1890s, although actually shot in the neighbouring state of Montana. It is based, although it takes many liberties with the facts, upon the Johnson County War, a historical conflict over grazing rights between large ranchers and small farmers, many of them European immigrants. The film's main characters are named Frank Canton, Nathan Champion, James Averill and Ella Watson; real individuals with these names played a part in the conflict, although in each case this was not the same part as they play in the film.
In the film Canton is the leader of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, which represents the interests of the big ranchers. The ranchers detest the small farmers, whom they accuse of stealing their cattle, and take the law into their own hands. They draw up a death list of 125 names and recruit an army of hired gunmen, who will receive a bounty for every person on the list killed. Averill is an idealistic Harvard-educated Sheriff who sides with the immigrants, Champion a hired enforcer for the ranchers who comes to doubt what he is doing. Ella is the madam of the local brothel and also the lover of both Averill and Champion. (In the film Ella is obviously French, but keeps the Anglo-Saxon surname of her real-life namesake, who was actually Canadian).
When it comes to artistic merits of the film, I should point out that I have only seen the shorter 2½-hour version which was originally shown in cinemas and is the version normally seen on British television; I have not seen Cimino's director's cut, which runs to more than 3½ hours. Certainly, "Heaven's Gate" has its faults. The dialogue is not always audible, and the plot sometimes difficult to follow. At times it can seem very slow paced, especially as the action is often slowed down by big set-pieces, such as the opening Harvard graduation scene (actually filmed in Oxford) or the roller-skating sequence, which are visually spectacular but do little to advance the story.
These, however, are faults which the film shares with "The Deer Hunter", and I find it difficult to understand why the later film should have been so reviled by the critics when the earlier one took "Best Picture". "The Deer Hunter" was perhaps fortunate in that its Vietnam War theme caught the mood of the American public at the time, whereas Westerns had already started to decline in popularity in the late seventies. Possibly "Heaven's Gate's" left-wing political slant (its sympathies are very much with the with the little man against big business) alienated more conservative audiences. (1980 was, after all, the year which first saw Ronald Reagan elected to the Presidency).
"Heaven's Gate", however, also has its virtues (as, indeed, does "The Deer Hunter"), and to my mind these outweigh its faults. Cimino was a director for whom the pictorial qualities of a film were as important as its narrative ones, and as in the earlier film he shows here that he has a good eye for a striking visual image- the opening shots of the mist-shrouded university buildings, a train pulling into a frosty station, the barn dance, the soaring Rocky Mountains. The film borrows elements from a number of famous Westerns; the grand scale of its battle sequences recalls Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", its lush photography and warm tones are reminiscent of Malick's "Days of Heaven" and Altman's "McCabe and Mrs Miller". (In that latter film too the main female character is a brothel madam).
Perhaps the film's most interesting feature is the way in which Cimino gives a new slant to old Western themes. Averill is essentially a similar character to Shane or Eastwood's High Plains Drifter- the outsider who tries to help a community in trouble. The scene where the small farmers, who have decided to fight back against their oppressors, encircle the ranchers and their private army, is strongly reminiscent of all those Westerns where the settlers are encircled by hostile Indians and saved at the last minute by the arrival of the cavalry. The difference is that Averill is defending the community not against outlaws but against an oppressive Establishment, and the cavalry in this film ride to the rescue of the bad guys, not of the heroes. "Heaven's Gate" is a revisionist Western, not in the sense that it seeks to replace moral distinctions with moral ambiguity (as, for example, "The Wild Bunch" did), but in the sense that it seeks to give an ironic new meaning to some of the genre's conventions.
Cimino was quite deliberately setting out to make a perfect masterpiece. He did not quite achieve that ambition, but it was an honourable one, and his failure was by a much lesser margin than some of his detractors would have us believe. "Heaven's Gate", a Western on a grand and epic scale, can be regarded as a flawed masterpiece. 7/10
Was he serious? Could Cimino really have gone from Oscar-winning whizz-kid to Ed Wood in just three short years? The answer is no. Certainly, the decision to make "Heaven's Gate" must rank among the worst business decisions ever made, but critics should beware of judging a film solely on its profit-and-loss account.
The film is set in Wyoming in the 1890s, although actually shot in the neighbouring state of Montana. It is based, although it takes many liberties with the facts, upon the Johnson County War, a historical conflict over grazing rights between large ranchers and small farmers, many of them European immigrants. The film's main characters are named Frank Canton, Nathan Champion, James Averill and Ella Watson; real individuals with these names played a part in the conflict, although in each case this was not the same part as they play in the film.
In the film Canton is the leader of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, which represents the interests of the big ranchers. The ranchers detest the small farmers, whom they accuse of stealing their cattle, and take the law into their own hands. They draw up a death list of 125 names and recruit an army of hired gunmen, who will receive a bounty for every person on the list killed. Averill is an idealistic Harvard-educated Sheriff who sides with the immigrants, Champion a hired enforcer for the ranchers who comes to doubt what he is doing. Ella is the madam of the local brothel and also the lover of both Averill and Champion. (In the film Ella is obviously French, but keeps the Anglo-Saxon surname of her real-life namesake, who was actually Canadian).
When it comes to artistic merits of the film, I should point out that I have only seen the shorter 2½-hour version which was originally shown in cinemas and is the version normally seen on British television; I have not seen Cimino's director's cut, which runs to more than 3½ hours. Certainly, "Heaven's Gate" has its faults. The dialogue is not always audible, and the plot sometimes difficult to follow. At times it can seem very slow paced, especially as the action is often slowed down by big set-pieces, such as the opening Harvard graduation scene (actually filmed in Oxford) or the roller-skating sequence, which are visually spectacular but do little to advance the story.
These, however, are faults which the film shares with "The Deer Hunter", and I find it difficult to understand why the later film should have been so reviled by the critics when the earlier one took "Best Picture". "The Deer Hunter" was perhaps fortunate in that its Vietnam War theme caught the mood of the American public at the time, whereas Westerns had already started to decline in popularity in the late seventies. Possibly "Heaven's Gate's" left-wing political slant (its sympathies are very much with the with the little man against big business) alienated more conservative audiences. (1980 was, after all, the year which first saw Ronald Reagan elected to the Presidency).
"Heaven's Gate", however, also has its virtues (as, indeed, does "The Deer Hunter"), and to my mind these outweigh its faults. Cimino was a director for whom the pictorial qualities of a film were as important as its narrative ones, and as in the earlier film he shows here that he has a good eye for a striking visual image- the opening shots of the mist-shrouded university buildings, a train pulling into a frosty station, the barn dance, the soaring Rocky Mountains. The film borrows elements from a number of famous Westerns; the grand scale of its battle sequences recalls Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", its lush photography and warm tones are reminiscent of Malick's "Days of Heaven" and Altman's "McCabe and Mrs Miller". (In that latter film too the main female character is a brothel madam).
Perhaps the film's most interesting feature is the way in which Cimino gives a new slant to old Western themes. Averill is essentially a similar character to Shane or Eastwood's High Plains Drifter- the outsider who tries to help a community in trouble. The scene where the small farmers, who have decided to fight back against their oppressors, encircle the ranchers and their private army, is strongly reminiscent of all those Westerns where the settlers are encircled by hostile Indians and saved at the last minute by the arrival of the cavalry. The difference is that Averill is defending the community not against outlaws but against an oppressive Establishment, and the cavalry in this film ride to the rescue of the bad guys, not of the heroes. "Heaven's Gate" is a revisionist Western, not in the sense that it seeks to replace moral distinctions with moral ambiguity (as, for example, "The Wild Bunch" did), but in the sense that it seeks to give an ironic new meaning to some of the genre's conventions.
Cimino was quite deliberately setting out to make a perfect masterpiece. He did not quite achieve that ambition, but it was an honourable one, and his failure was by a much lesser margin than some of his detractors would have us believe. "Heaven's Gate", a Western on a grand and epic scale, can be regarded as a flawed masterpiece. 7/10