Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s Western epic that turns 40 on Nov. 19, earned a place in Hollywood infamy for bankrupting United Artists and bringing the curtain down on the auteur era of the 1970s.
But the truth is, Heaven’s Gate is good. In its Nov. 20, 1980, review, The Hollywood Reporter said the film — about the 1892 Johnson County War, in which wealthy Wyoming cattle owners slaughtered immigrant homesteaders — had "explosive force" and was "richly textured and visually compelling." But THR was an outlier.
After it screened for critics in New York on Nov. 18, the buzz was instantaneous: Cimino’s film — whose massive cost overruns hadbeen covered in the press — was a disaster. "I always suspected that maybe the movie got talked about.
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