Heaven's Gate with Kris Kristofferson: DVD Cover

    Heaven's Gate
    a.k.a. Johnson County War Director: Michael Cimino Cast: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Sam Waterston

    DVD - Wide Screen / Dolby 5.1 Learn more

    BUY THIS ITEM

    • $14.99 Online price
      $13.49 Member price
      Join Now
      • skip to cart
    • Add To List uiAction=GetAllLists&page=List&pageType=list&ean=027616837127&productCode=DV&maxCount=100&threshold=3

    GET FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OF $25 OR MORE

    DELIVERY & GIFT DETAILS:

    Usually ships within 24 hours

    Delivery Time and Shipping Rates

    Eligible for gift wrap & gift message.

    Enter a zip code

    • DVD Release Date: 02/29/2000
    • Original Release: 1981
    • Rating: Rated R
    • Sales Rank: 6,864

    Viewer Rating: (3 ratings)

    See All Detailed Ratings

    Customers who bought this also bought

     
    • Overview
    • Editorial Reviews
    • Scenes
    • Customer Reviews
    • Cast & Crew
    • Full Product Details

    Features

    Collectible booklet; Original theatrical trailer

    Full Product Details

    Scene Index

    Scene Selections
    0. Scene Selections
    1. Logos/Title/Credits [2:44]
    2. Graduation, 1870 [6:12]
    3. The Class Orator [:52]
    4. Dancing On The Lawn [3:34]
    5. Florwers For The Lady [3:00]
    6. Farewell To Youth [:35]
    7. Foreign Train [1:34]
    8. Hard Time In Casper [2:48]
    9. "What's Going On?" [3:32]
    10. The Association [1:03]
    11. Ugly Rumors & Pool [6:29]
    12. "We'll Work Our Land." [1:16]
    13. Looking For 25 Men [5:40]
    14. Fighting Starvation [2:09]
    15. Cock Fight [2:43]
    16. A War On The County? [5:04]
    17. Breaking Up A Fight [1:48]
    18. Sexy Pie [2:24]
    19. Ella's Birthday Present [2:08]
    20. A Thoughtful Talk [1:25]
    21. Skating & Fiddling [:11]
    22. It's Time To Leave [1:13]
    23. "Cash Or Cattle?" [1:30]
    24. Champion's Turn [3:19]
    25. "What Do You Want?" [3:05]
    26. Backbreaking Work [6:19]
    27. The Death List [1:23]
    28. Fighting Over Ella [3:22]
    29. Acting Civilized [3:33]
    30. Trainload Of Killers [1:55]
    31. Hunted Citizen [3:52]
    32. Tongue-Tied [2:12]
    33. The Horrible Truth [3:10]
    34. A Terrible Intrusion [4:32]
    35. Rescued Too Late [2:22]
    36. "We Are The Law!" [5:40]
    37. Jim Bows Out [1:32]
    38. Drunk & Fired [3:28]
    39. Besieged [2:02]
    40. "Hold Together!" [3:09]
    41. Caught In The Fray [1:59]
    42. "Too Many Of Them!" [:35]
    43. Cold Farewell [5:27]
    44. A Roman Offense [1:46]
    45. "Military Authority." [2:30]
    46. Lost Love [1:42]
    47. Adrift Years Later [2:52]
    48. End Credits [4:13]

    Scene Index

    Editorial Reviews

    A notorious artistic and financial failure, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate was blamed for critically wounding the movie Western and definitively ushering out the 1970s Hollywood New Wave of young, brash, independent filmmakers. Taking a revisionist, post-Vietnam view of American imperialism, Cimino used the historical Johnson County War incident in Wyoming to create an impressionistic tapestry of Western conflict between poor immigrant settlers and rich cattle barons led by Canton (Sam Waterston) and his hired gun Nate Champion (Christopher Walken). Attempting to mediate is idealistic Harvard graduate and county marshal Averill (Kris Kristofferson), who is both Nate's friend and his romantic rival for the affections of Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert). However, war erupts, at great cost to all involved. Flush from his success with the Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter (1978), Cimino demanded creative control, and his insistence on shooting on location and building historically accurate sets and props multiplied the film's original budget to a then-astronomical $36 million. When United Artists premiered the original 219-minute version (sight unseen), they discovered that Cimino had produced an elliptical epic, compounding the box-office difficulties of making a Western without any major stars. Critics howled about Cimino's incomprehensible self-indulgence, and United Artists pulled the film after several days. Re-released five months later, 70 minutes shorter, Heaven's Gate bombed again, and MGM bought out the financially crippled United Artists. The ailing Western genre virtually vanished during the 1980s, Cimino's career never recovered, and Hollywood studios had had enough of bankrolling financially risky ventures by "auteur" directors. Heaven's Gate's reputation recovered somewhat after its video release, as it garnered praise from some viewers for such visually remarkable sequences as the Harvard dance and the final battle, as well as for David Mansfield's haunting score. Steven Bach's book Final Cut provides a full production history. Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

    Customer Reviews

    Heaven's Gateby Anonymous

    Reader Rating:
    See Detailed Ratings

    June 14, 2004: The cable channel TRIO ran this film, along with a documentary about its making, in a series called 'FLOPS!' I watched the documentary first, all the while asking myself whether the film's enormous problems -- the huge cost overruns, the unreasonable number of takes per scene (from 32 to 57!), the 200% schedule delay -- had any effect on the quality of the film itself. As I started watching the film, expecting to laughat it and turn it off after a few scenes, I found myself becoming enchanted by it. I think it's a gorgeous film, and Cimino's notorious attention to period detail was a tremendous gift to someone like me, because I love to look at 19th-century photos. The film is very faithful to period photographs, and even evokes Manet and Van Gogh paintings. There is no music soundtrack to artificially engage the emotions, other than ambient singing or violin- playing within a given scene, and the pacing is sometimes rather slow. I think it failed at the box office because Michael Cimino thought he was making an American blockbuster like 'Gone with the Wind,' but what he has is an art film. Apparently this movie is considered a masterpiece in Europe. It is a movie worthy of a second chance, to be viewed without prejudice.

    Heaven's Gateby Anonymous

    Reader Rating:
    See Detailed Ratings

    March 13, 2004: It?s hard to not be fascinated by a disaster of this magnitude. No matter what you have heard about ?Heaven?s Gate,? no matter how often you?ve heard it described as ?misunderstood and overlooked genius? or ?total garbage,? ?Heaven?s Gate? must surely haunt the mind of every filmmaker who spends more than $5.28 putting his visions on film. Everyone who is serious about movies needs to see ?Heaven?s Gate,? because it, and the disaster it wrought on the film industry killed anything like the spirit of invention and originality that once made Hollywood great. It is because of the ?Heaven?s Gate? disaster that all but a very few moviemakers have all the originality of a photocopier spewing out cookie-cutter like imitations of the Last Big Thing. 'Heaven's Gate' failed in the only way the people who make most popular films understand: revenue, and it failed very big. This is not the worst movie ever made, not by a long shot, but its name is synonymous with failure. That alone is the best possible recommendation for seeing it.


    More Customer Reviews