Sometimes a major Oscar can be a curse in disguise. And a reputation as a movie disaster can be an injustice.
Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate”–an epic western about the Johnson County wars in 1892 Wyoming, starring Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken as a sheriff and gunfighter battling for the affections of a prostitute (Isabelle Huppert)–was Cimino’s follow-up to his multi-Oscar winning Vietnam War drama triumph, “The Deer Hunter,” which won best picture and best director Oscars for 1978.
Heightened expectations fueled by “Hunter,” unfortunately, may have caused “Gate” to later gain its ill fame as a cinematic catastrophe. Released at just over 3 1/2 hours in 1980 and subject to devastating early reviews, it was withdrawn, cut to 149 minutes and, after a predictable commercial flop, became the subject of a vicious memoir, “Final Cut” by the studio executive who had approved it, Steven Bach.
Back in 1980, I saw the original cut of “Heaven’s Gate” in New York, in the only week of its opening run. I always thought the reviews were wrong. Flawed it may be, but “Heaven’s Gate” also has magnificent things in it: visual bravura, nervous lyricism and sweeping melancholy grandeur that exert a genuine spell. It’s an attempt at an “art western,” a radical historical epic. A left-wing, pro-labor symbolic drama, it uses the Johnson County range wars (which pitted entrenched landowners and politicians against poor or socialist immigrants) to comment on the America of 1980. That may have created some of the enmity. Besides overspending with Von Stroheim-like prodigality on “Gate,” Cimino was indicted for biting the capitalistic hand that fed him.
The radical labor elements in “Gate” are overdrawn. But as a psychological western, it often works thrillingly well. It’s beautifully shot (by “Deliverance’s” Vilmos Zsigmond), excitingly and grandiosely staged and acted by a fascinatingly offbeat cast–including France’s brilliant Huppert, who was ridiculed as “potato-faced” in Bach’s ungallant book. To fully appreciate “Heaven’s Gate,” it’s important to place it in the maverick western tradition of “The Wild Bunch,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “Little Big Man,” the “outsider” westerns of Clint Eastwood (who gave Cimino his big directorial break with 1974’s “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”) and Nick Ray’s anti-lynching, anti-McCarthy 1954 classic “Johnny Guitar.”
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Indeed one of the movie’s raffish characters (played by the young, then-unknown Mickey Rourke) is named Nick Ray.
Watching “Heaven’s Gate” again last week, I thought its power, if anything, had grown. I still loved the twisted romanticism, bloody climax, somber coda and those huge set-pieces (such as the opening college revels), which, like the wedding scene in “Deer Hunter,” run so wildly past what you’d expect. They don’t make westerns like “The Searchers,” “Shane” or “Red River” any more. But they also don’t make westerns like “Heaven’s Gate” and “Johnny Guitar.” More’s the pity.
“Heaven’s Gate,” director’s cut ((star)(star)(star)1/2) plays at 6:30 p.m. Fri. and Mon.-Thu.; 3, 7:30 p.m. Sat. and 2 p.m. Sun. at the Gene Siskel Center, 164 N. State St. Call 312-846-2600 or visit www.siskel filmcenter.org. MPAA rating: R. Running time: 3:39.
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