Venice Film Festival: Michael Cimino Revisits \'Heaven\'s Gate\'

By DENNIS LIM

VENICE - Most box office flops rarely even attain the status of film-history footnote. But “Heaven's Gate,” the 1980 epic by Michael Cimino, became a legend. Its notoriously troubled production and disastrous premiere turned it into a punch line, a cautionary tale, a symbol of all that was wrong with the Hollywood system and its excesses. In the popular telling at least, this sprawling western, which recounts the violent conflict between wealthy cattle barons and poor European settlers in 1890s Wyoming, is the film that derailed the career of its ambitious young director (who had won an Oscar for “The Deer Hunter”) and sank its studio, United Artists.

In some ways the themes of the film predicted its fate. “Heaven's Gate” offers a grim view of American capitalism, and Mr. Cimino's big sin was not in spending money so much as in losing it: the budget ballooned during the long, difficult shoot (from $7 million to more than $30 million), and it earned only $3 million in the United States. (The imbroglio was famously documented in a book by the former United Artists executive Steven Bach.) Detractors of Mr. Cimino blamed his youthful arrogance; defenders called him a scapegoat.

While the first American reviews of “Heaven's Gate” were almost uniformly savage, it has always enjoyed a healthier reputation in Europe, where the film's virtues - not to mention its historical context and political dimension - have not been overshadowed by its colorful production back story. It is only fitting then that the current revival of “Heaven's Gate” got under way Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, where a new digital restoration by the Criterion Collection was shown in the presence of Mr. Cimino.

On the stage of the Sala Perla here, Mr. Cimino, a trim 73-year-old wearing sunglasses, was in a jovial mood even as he spoke candidly about the psychic toll of a movie that went on to d efine his career for all the wrong reasons. It was the producer of “Heaven's Gate,” Joann Carelli, who asked Mr. Cimino to be involved in the new restoration. He acknowledged that he was initially reluctant. “I've had enough rejection for 33 years,” he said. “I don't need more. Being infamous is not fun. It becomes a weird kind of occupation in and of itself.”

But there was nothing resembling rejection here: the rapt audience greeted the film with a sustained standing ovation. (This 216-minute version is essentially the same as the original release - Mr. Cimino removed a 2-minute intermission and made several minor tweaks.) Time has been kind to “Heaven's Gate,” which may well strike viewers who don't know the back story, as a grand, eccentric yet elegiac rethinking of the myths of the West (and the western), with an uncommonly blunt take on class in America. (“It's getting dangerous to be poor in this country,” someone says at one point. The rejo inder: “It always was.”)

In an interview at a beachside restaurant at the Excelsior Hotel here Friday morning, Mr. Cimino said that this was the first time he had seen the film all the way through since its New York premiere in August 1980. He summed up the experience in a single word: “Strange.”

He was subdued at first, reluctant to reopen old wounds and wary of speaking on the record to a newspaper he regards as an old adversary. (Vincent Canby's review in The New York Times pronounced “Heaven's Gate” “an unqualified disaster.”) But over the course of what turned into a leisurely conversation, Mr. Cimino warmed up, holding forth on his love of American landscape and Russian literature, and the joy of rediscovering some aspects of the film: the light and color of the images and the performances of Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken and Isabelle Huppert, whom he said he hoped finally get recognition for their work in the film.

He acknowl edged that the standing ovation was gratifying, but he was especially happy for Ms. Carelli, who was also present and who “never lost faith,” he said.

“I was moved,” he said. “I thought my heart was going to explode. But I was thrilled for Joann to have her work acknowledged. She made this movie happen.”

The restored “Heaven's Gate” will be shown in the Masterworks section of the New York Film Festival on Oct. 5, with Mr. Cimino in attendance. Criterion will release the film on DVD and Blu-ray in November.