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Heaven’s Gate movie storyline. In Michael Cimino’s bleak anti-western based on events in 1890s Wyoming, Sheriff James Averill attempts to protect immigrant farmers from wealthy cattle interests, and also clashes with a hired gun, Nathan Champion, over the woman they both love. Both men find themselves questioning their roles in the furious conflict between wealthy landowners and European immigrants attempting to build new lives on the American frontier, which culminates in a brutal pitched battle.
Heaven’s Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film written and directed by Michael Cimino. Loosely based on the Johnson County War, it portrays a fictional dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s. The cast includes Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey Lewis, David Mansfield, Richard Masur, Terry O’Quinn, Mickey Rourke, Willem Dafoe and Nicholas Woodeson, the last two in their first film roles. It is generally considered one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, often being described as one of the worst films ever made.
There were major setbacks in the film’s production due to cost and time overruns, negative press (including allegations of animal abuse on-set), and rumors about Cimino’s allegedly overbearing directorial style; the film resultantly opened to poor reviews, earning only $3.5 million domestically (from an estimated $44 million budget), eventually causing its parent studio, United Artists, to collapse, and effectively destroying the reputation of its director, Cimino, previously a rising Hollywood auteur from the success of his 1978 film The Deer Hunter, winner of the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director in 1979.
Cimino had an expensive and ambitious vision for the film, pushing it nearly four times over its planned budget. Its resulting financial problems and United Artists’ consequent demise led to a move away from the brief 1970s period of director-driven film production in the American film industry, back towards greater studio control of films, as had been predominant in Hollywood until the late 1960s.
In the decades since the film’s release, however, general assessment of it has become more nuanced, and, in some cases, more positive, with some critics now describing Heaven’s Gate as a “modern masterpiece”; the 1980 re-edit of which after poor test screenings being characterized as “one of the greatest injustices of cinematic history”. The BBC ranked Heaven’s Gate 98th on their 100 greatest American films of all-time list.
Heaven’s Gate (1980)
Directed by: Michael Cimino
Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, Joseph Cotten
Screenplay by: Michael Cimino
Production Design by: Tambi Larsen
Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing by; Lisa Fruchtman, William Reynolds, Tom Rolf
Costume Design by: J. Allen Highfill
Set Decoration by: James L. Berkey, Josie MacAvin
Music by: David Mansfield
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: November 19, 1980
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