Does anyone know if the original 5 hour + version has ever been seen by anybody other than the former United Artists studio execs? Is it available on a bootleg DVD? Even though I didn't really like "Heaven's Gate", it be interesting to see Michael Cimino's original vision.
shareThe full 5 hr + version is long gone. From what I heard all the footage not used was destroyed. The 210 minutes version is the most complete one out there.
share[deleted]
I disagree, not just with the assumption that Heaven's Gate isn't a good film (Its a great film), but that making a "bad" movie longer can't redeem it. Editing is a very delicate matter. We don't know exactly what was cut out, and maybe it was footage that would completely change the film as we know it.
I think a good example is Rivette's Va Savoir, which is available in a 154 mintue cut and a 220 minute cut. the 154, despite being over an hour shorter, feels longer, because in the process of cutting it down, you've cut the film to its bare essentials, leaving a pretty simplistic story with a still rather long running time. The extra hour in the longer cut, however, adds subplots and information which makes the story much more complex, enriches the footage in the earlier cut, and makes its length justifiable in a way the shorter cut can't. You go from wondering "it was a good movie, but jeez, did it have to be that long? you could have told the same story in a shorter amount of time" in its stripped down state, to recognizing that the movie HAD to be 220 minutes in the longer cut.
Considering that only problem I can see in Heaven's Gate is that its plot seems pretty bare bones for its length, I wouldn't hesitate to say a similar thing happened here. Cimino obviously made a longer film, and according to his opinion, the current cut is about as short as you could get it without completely ruining and making it incomprehensible, but it still is not long enough to contain everything he wanted to say. Whether good or bad, a longer cut would definitely transform Heaven's Gate into a completely different beast.
I quite agree. The 149m version of Heaven's Gate stinks, but the 219m version is wonderful. In fact, my greatest criticism of the 219m version is that it seems choppy near the end, and could benefit from more footage/content in a few spots! So, I'd be up for watching a yet longer version.
share[deleted]
The 5 hour cut was real. They showed the entire thing on Z Channel, after the shorter cut had been released in theatres to beyond disappointing reception.
They talk about this in Xan Cassavetes' Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession.
Showing the original cut on Z is basically the reason positive interest in this film even exists.
I thought Z Channel broadcast the 219 minute version, which was pulled from theatrical release after receiving negative criticisms at its New York premiere. The 320 minute version was supposedly only shown to studio insiders at a private screening. I don't know if it was intended to be a final cut or just a rough assembly of footage.
sharefrom Wikipedia:
"Despite these setbacks, the movie was salvaged by an unlikely source. The Z Channel, a cable pay TV channel that at its peak in the mid-1980s served 100,000 of Los Angeles' most influential film professionals, was the only network showing uncut movies on television. After the failed release of the re-edited and shortened Heaven's Gate, Jerry Harvey, the channel's programmer, decided to play Cimino's 219 minute cut. The re-assembled movie received admiring reviews and coined the term "director's cut."[citation needed]
When MGM home video released the film on VHS in the 1980s, they released Cimino's 219 minute cut, using the tagline "Heaven's Gate… The Legendary Uncut Version." Subsequent releases on laserdisc and DVD have been the 219 minute cut. The 149 minute cut, released in 1981, has never been released on home video in the United States and is now very difficult to see or get access to. This cut of the film is not just shorter but differs in placement of scenes and selection of takes."
I stand corrected.
Nice work.
*
A
[deleted]
andy-1110,
Wow. Not only do you admit you made a mistake, you present proof that you were wrong. I applaud you, sir. Honesty is in short supply these days, especially on message boards.
You mean they showed the 219 min cut on Z Channel, right? As others pointed out, the five hour version will probably never resurface. Also, that first five hour version wasn't Cimino's final version. Even he thought it was a little long.
shareI think many of he scenes were too long and went on long after the point was made. I have a feeling that when the film was edited down, what was cut were the connecting scenes that may have made the remaining scenes more meaningful.
shareFive hours' worth of THESE soggy oats ? Sacre bleu! Give me "The Great Train Robbery", instead. That wasn't art, either, but the horses in it didn't cost 40 million bucks. And at least the narrative was easier to follow. In fact, it's possible that the immigrants depicted in HG weren't looking for a new home; they were looking for the plot line.
Five hours? I wonder if they use it down at Gitmo to torture the terrorists. I doubt it, though. That could be deemed cruel and unusual punishment, even when applied to guys that like to lop heads off.
It was only ever shown to studio execs, never in any way to the public. The 219 minute version was Cimino's final version. It's what was originally shown in public, what caused the critic's backlash and what is now available in Cimino's final version. He removed the sepia tone filter, changed a couple of minor sound edits and made one continuity edit in the ending. Other than those last changes it's the 219-minute version that is the director's cut.
The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.-Oscar Wilde
I agree with this completely. (And the next poster as well.)
What did Cimino meticulously prep and shoot? And how much better is that idealized version, even if it's outrageously long?
I think in this day and age of serving fans of cinema with director's cuts, director's commentaries, making of's, and other behind the scene extras, an even longer, truer version of this film demands to be released to the public.
Orson Welles' 'Touch of Evil' springs to mind immediately.
Even though Cimino became the definition of all that could go wrong with a director, his vision and narrative sensibility are certainly noteworthy in the long history of cinema.
I think contemporary filmmakers can learn a great deal from his approach to organic storytelling. In fact, the elegance and deliberate pacing of 'Heaven's Gate' or 'The Deer Hunter' would be a revelation to audiences of my generation -- that is if the emotional potency exists, as in the latter.
Michael Cimino, if you're somehow reading this, you're an inspiration! Haha.
yes and it was meant to be that other beast. What was released was a last resort t get something/anything released. I wonder if they could have not released it in two parts as we've seen epics like Kill Bill or Lord of the Rings? probably too novel an approach for the time.
shareThe footage is most likely still around but not in the best shape. I think an interesting documentary could be made about the "cut footage"
sharenot sure about the 5 hr 20 min version, but i just downloaded a version that is 4 hrs and 41 mins!
sharecan you describe to us and link us a dl :D
share[deleted]
It's a movie of tremendous beauty and the rare period piece that manages to turn its setting into an entire world unto itself. In that sense, its in the tradition of Barry Lyndon, Days of Heaven and, in a lower key, McCabe and Mrs. Miller; a type of BIG cinema that isn't attempted anymore (Mel Gibson is the only living director to attempt such things, but he's lousy as a storyteller and has too much ideological baggage). If it was just 5 hours of Vilmos Zsigmond filming extras standing around the sets in costume, it would be a masterpiece.
Kristofferson is perfect. I always thought he was underrated as an actor (largely through poor film choices). He doesn't have a lot of range, and in most instances he couldn't carry a film, but when a role matches his range, he pulls it off. He's the perfect mix of wounded idealism, ambivalence and silent stoicism in this film. Like a post-60s "age of cynicism" Randolph Scott (which I'm certain is what Cimino was going for).
It is brilliant and a masterpiece and the best Hollywood film of its decade. I shake my head in bewilderment to anyone who says otherwise.
[deleted]
The 4hr 41min version has a problem with the file. It ends at 219 mins then plays the 1st hour of the film again.
share[deleted]
You hold Four Flies on Grey Velvet - one of Argento's worst, laziest and most tedious movies (and I say that as a fan of the director) in inexplicably high regard, yet can't understand why people might be similarly enthusiastic about Heaven's Gate? Compared to Four Flies - a real chore of a movie if ever there was one - Heaven's Gate positively flies by.
"Security - release the badgers."
>>I'm responding to your previous posting solely because I don't want people to experience what I had to go through. I read postings online by people like you who hold HEAVEN'S GATE in the highest possible regard, and I opted to take a chance on it, despite the negative public and critical response to it upon its release. Whoops. I just want to inform those who may be curious about the film that it's a terrible movie on all fronts (excepting, admittedly, the aesthetics, which don't justify a screening of this yawner) and that it's very unlikely that YOU, the potential viewer, will enjoy any of it. Avoid HEAVEN'S GATE at any and all costs.<<
It's curious that, knowing there are people who disagree with you about this movie, you attempt to discourage people from seeing it in order to "spare" them. Doesn't it occur to you that you might just as well be depriving them of something they'd enjoy, even if you can't?
"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde
There are basically 3 types of adult filmgoers. 1-The ones who go for escapism only, and just want to be entertained. Whether it be comedy, drama , action-adventure, western-does not matter. The second- are people who are art-film freaks. Those who go for the art of filmmaking, and care far more about the substance and vision of the film and its creators', then being entertained by funny scenes, or explosions, or a gunfight. In fact, they are entertained more by discussing a complex story, expensive cinematography, and the like. Then there are the rare few-like myself-that like both. And if a film can manage to do both-that is the rarest of the rare. And while, I wasn't highly entertained by Heaven's Gate-I was entertained. Both by the realism of the story, and the characters, and the famous actors, and the cinematography-and the locale and time period. Cimino really wanted to show the way things were back then. The movie was far too gritty for that time period in which it was made. However, I love the fact that he showed us so much. The types of people involved, why the conflict, and of course, the typical but real love triangle-The kind of triangle that has been going on for thousands of years. I think it is necessary to try and show modern day society how difficult life was just a century ago. It has really only been since the modern industrial age, that things began to change. And then finally w the advent of modern medicine and transportation. This allowed people to spread out over the entire US in mass numbers, preventing what happened in the movie from continuing to take place. I think people that have commented on how horrible this movie is, are far too narrow minded. It's pretty obvious that Heaven's Gate is a time capsule of a rarely talked about time and place in the history of our country. He felt that story had not yet been told. And I think he was right. If you look at a movie like The Outlaw Josey Wales, for example-There is not a whole lot of entertainment going on in that movie either. Clint Eastwood saves the movie, because he is Clint-simple as that. He has his usual witty banter scenes thrown in to divert us from the very real revenge horse opera that is taking place on the screen. Lets' face it Clint is a rare breed-putting him in a movie like Heaven's Gate would have only ruined its realism. I think that type one movie goers should refrain from commenting on these types of movies. They really have no idea how the process of storytelling or moviemaking, works. All they know is that they were bored, and thats it. I realize that hollywood is a business, but moviemaking is also an art form, and should be treated as such. You know there are people who will go to the Louvre and stare at the Mona Lisa for hours, trying to figure out what it means, and the significance of it. If an inanimate object can be treated in that manner, then so can a film.......
shareThe 5+ hour version is referred to in Bach's book, FINAL CUT. Indeed, I would love to see it and would be the first in line.
I love the film as it stands - but find the shorter re-cut fascinating, as it contains a different order of sequences as well as unique ones that do NOT appear in the longer cut.
I truly wish that Cimino would/could revisit this work and construct a version that includes footage from both versions.
[deleted]
Cimino revisited the 219-minute cut, removed the sepia filter, made a couple of sound edits and slightly changed the end sequence on the boat. Other than that, it remains his preferred version.
The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.-Oscar Wilde
[deleted]
The reason REAL westerners hate immigrants is that the immigrants bring all thier cultural crap with them and, over the years, have DESTROYED the west. It's happening to this day.
Go to Tombstone AZ and read some of the articles in the Tombstone Epitaph in the courthouse museum. It's why California is now as lame as New York.
<<The reason REAL westerners hate immigrants is that the immigrants bring all thier cultural crap with them and, over the years, have DESTROYED the west. It's happening to this day. <<
Ironically, this is why a lot of people in other countries have issues with the US: because American pop culture is replacing THEIR culture. When I went to Amsterdam a couple years ago, I took a train ride down to Paris for three days, and you know what I saw on every single bridge that we passed under? Graffiti. Young musicians attempt to emulate American and Anglo musical styles. And the kids dress in American style fashions. And American television and movies are very big over there. I guess what it comes down to is the older people are afraid that their culture is being supplanted by this homogenized American thing, and that the old ways will vanish forever.
My local library had this on videotape; it ran for 3:26:44 from the UA symbol to the final line of text (approximately). I enjoyed watching it but thought I probably wouldn't bother again, though the music they danced to in the middle attracted me enough to record it. It is on TV tonight and they give it a 4-hour slot, but that would include ads. (UK on TCM). I might record it. I am keen to watch the ending again as my memory of it doesn't match Wikipedia's.
fleapit
Who are the REAL westerners? Are they the American Indians whom the European immigrants committed genocide against? Are they the Mexicans whose country once encompassed what is now the vast southwest of the United States along with California until the spawn of the original European immigrants instigated a war in order to conquer that territory for the imperialistic politicians governing the United States?
Or, are REAL westerners the Waspish offspring of the original European colonists? The wonderful trait exhibited by the existing upper class descendants of the first wave of European immigrants in the film is how they valued money over the lives of more recent European immigrants in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
What destroyed the West is the concept,right or wrong of "Manifest Destiny".
There was no longer a Western Frontier for individuals that were so inclined to live a completely free life.
My VHS tape is 220 minutes, which, allowing as well for the intermission, probably compares to the version which I saw on Manhattan's Upper East Side during the film's disastrous one-week original release. I doubt very much there is any other "expanded" version, whatever the legends swirling claim.
More importantly, the movie is crap. And it is wildly, slantedly deceitful crap, Cimino's attempt to make a sort of Russian-influenced "socialist realism" western or something like that. But in the original events, there were no huge gun battles, no starving immigrants, etc. Cimino made all that up, to better to attempt to make his political case. In fact, there weren't even a James Averell (the proper spelling) and an Ella Watson at the time, since both had been lynched, for unclear reasons, by (mainly) unidentified assailants in July, 1889. Averell wasn't even, as the film claims, a Harvard man, but, rather, a mere saloonkeeper who'd recently completed a 10-year hitch in the Army, finishihg as a private.
All that Cimino took from genuine, recorded history is the issue of rustling, which oddly enough is never actually shown in "Heaven's Gate," and the character of Nate Champion, although Cimino, in his striving to make a politicized movie, naturally shows no sympathy whatsoever for the cattlemen of circa 1892 Wyoming (who were hard-pressed economically by that point, especially after three fierce winters in a row). And not even the villainous Frank Canton in the movie bears any relationship to his real-life counterpart, who was a hired "stock detective" who actually died in bed many years afterward. He was certainly not the would-be plutocrat Sam Waterston plays, nor was Frank Canton een his real name.
Some of the evidence hints that quite a few of the Johnson County
"invaders" (even though most were in fact from Wyoming themselves, not, as the film holds, mercenaries recruited in Texas) ended up 6 years later serving in the Spanish-American War, particularly as Roosevelt and Wood's "Rough Riders." The best available historical look at the Johnson County War remains "War On The Powder River" by Helena Huntington Smith, which was published by the University of Nebraska Press but may now be out of print. There is also an admirably concise summary in one chapter of Mari Sandoz's "The Cattlemen." Both books go into some detail on the frontier economy of 1892 Wyoming, which is nothing like Cimino's version, and Smith also covers the questionable constitutionality of the private army which rode into Johnson County in '92.
Cimino never intended the 5 hour 20 minute version to be his final cut. He intended to shorten it, though only by 15 minutes according to Steven Bach in Final Cut. Also, Bach said that the battle sequence in the orignal version was about 90 minutes (!), as compared to the 20-30 minutes in the 3 hour 40 minute version. So more than 50% of the reduction came in the battle sequence (which is frankly still too long).
I'd be curious to hear what Cimino believes to be "his" version of the movie, or if that version even exists. If the latter is the case, I'd also be curious to see what he could come up with. That assumes that the original footage still exists; Cimino printed more than 1.3 million feet of film, which is the equivalent to 220 hours of film. I don't know if that amount could be stored practically. More importantly, that assumes that Cimino could be trusted to work with any degree of efficiency, which he never did on Heaven's Gate except under duress.
It is just gone 2 in the morning in England and I have just watched the film on TCM. It ran for 3 hours 57 minutes including ads (TCM is a commercial station). Four groups at 3 minutes makes the film 3 hours 39. And I have to tell you I am shattered. How anyone watching this could look away for a moment is beyond me. Mind you I am sure people are right - it is totally preposterous, but boy, is it stylish.
PS my earlier posting got shuffled in up above somewhere; my incompetence I suppose. And I'm still not sure how the film ends. It looks as though Wikipedia is right but that makes no sense. I'll watch it again after I've had a good night's sleep.
fleapit
eddie-267:
Which ending did you see? "Shattered" is a good word to describe the effect the film had on me when I first saw it soon after its initial release. It was at an art house theater here in Los Angeles.
Powerful film.
Supposedly all that million + feet of extra footage was destroyed, no copies of it exist. Guess they didn't want to have to store all those reels.
»«ëÕ|{¥(V)
I can't understand your crazy moon language.
I watched it during a film festival in New York 4 years ago. I doubt you can find a bootleg of it though.
share[deleted]
[deleted]
Well cool, the fact that it's playing at festivals gives at least some microcosm of hope that it'll get some type of home release in the years to come, no matter how unlikely the odds really are. Definitely would love to see it on the big screen though, that would be one of the ultimate cinematic experiences of a lifetime.
share[deleted]