Forty Years Ago Last Month…
by Gary Palmucci | 6th December 2020 | Gary's Corner
Forty years ago last month… two ambitious American movies opened in New York that have made an indelible imprint on moviegoers around the world. We’re still thinking and sometimes arguing about them, they’re still being screened in revival theaters, tweaked and upgraded on digital formats. The films are Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. I was there on the opening night of both films – two screenings I’ll never forget in an amazing week. Perhaps some of you were, too.
Both films had been keenly anticipated all year by avid moviegoers due to their directors and casts, each had gone over schedule, over budget, and their final soundtracks and film prints completed only within a day or two of the first official screenings. Raging Bull opened first on Nov 14, 1980, at the RKO Warner on Broadway & 47 St and across town at the Sutton on East 57th – two theatres now long gone from the scene. The Warner wasn’t quite full that night (though I’m sure the Sutton was) but there were many gasps and howls during the boxing scenes where Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro, clearly in superb fighting trim) administered and took bloody punishment from Tony Janiro, Sugar Ray Robinson and others. Just as painful and transfixing were LaMotta’s tragic domestic battles with his brother and wife (Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty, both virtual newcomers and casting miracles) and his eventual bloated physical decline, again rendered utterly convincing by Oscar-winner DeNiro.
It was too much for some audiences and perhaps still is. But the NY Times’ Vincent Canby pronounced it Scorsese’s best film to date, a judgment which I think still holds up. In a recent book about the making of his later mob classic Goodfellas, the director recalled the making of Raging Bull as a ‘life experience.’ In the passion of its filmmaking craft and performances and unblinking compassion through convulsive violent emotions, many viewers have also long regarded it that same way.
Then, five days later on Nov 19, Heaven’s Gate opened at the (still-standing) Cinema I, the evening screening packed with ticket buyers most of whom had bought them via advance sale. Director Cimino, who’d hit an Oscar grand slam with his prior film The Deer Hunter, was clearly swinging for the fences again with this 3 hour, 39 minute epic about a bloody 1890’s range war between immigrants and cattle barons in Johnson County, Wyoming.
What we saw was a meticulously detailed, unusually rhythmed period piece (complete with intermission) that seemed like a mix of John Ford, Sam Peckinpah and Sergei Eisenstein and which –clearly unbeknownst to much of the audience– had been labeled that morning by the Times’ Canby as “something quite rare in movies these days – an unmitigated disaster.” That review became one of the most infamous in movie history; most NY and national film critics followed suit and set off an industry debacle. Producing studio United Artists panicked at the prospect of a total loss on its $35 million-plus investment and quickly withdrew the film for re-editing, which proved fruitless. A classic book by UA exec Steven Bach later told most (though not all) of the complex saga, and much hand-wringing circulated well into the 80s about directorial over-indulgence and corporate irresponsibility. But over the ensuing decades, Heaven’s Gate’s reputation gradually began to tick somewhat upward. Its elaborate set-pieces– including an opening Harvard graduation, a huge frontier roller rink dance, some of the most complex battle scenes in modern film, and deeply committed performances from Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, and (!!) Isabelle Huppert– gained more appreciation from critics, movie buffs and filmmakers who appreciated its artistic daring. Michael Cimino’s career never regained its early heights but he lived to see the film digitally upgraded and presented at the 2012 NY Film Festival. In a scene midway through, Jeff Bridges says to his friend Kristofferson, “It’s getting dangerous to be poor in this country,” and the latter mutters, “Always was.” The NYFF audience burst into applause– one more signal that movies that dare to swing for those fences, however flawed, can often stand the test of time….forty years later.
– Gary Palmucci