5 hr 20 min version???
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bstephens21 — 17 years ago(October 21, 2008 02:25 PM)
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. -
JadeJaguar — 17 years ago(November 17, 2008 09:24 PM)
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. -
andy-1110 — 17 years ago(January 07, 2009 12:16 PM)
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. -
col_rutherford — 17 years ago(January 07, 2009 07:34 PM)
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.
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andy-1110 — 17 years ago(February 20, 2009 08:37 AM)
from 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 -
Pred3000 — 13 years ago(December 08, 2012 04:45 PM)
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.
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mandrake62 — 17 years ago(March 15, 2009 09:29 AM)
I 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.
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paskuniag — 15 years ago(April 01, 2011 06:31 AM)
Five 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. -
gayspiritwarrior — 9 years ago(July 14, 2016 05:51 PM)
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 -
yonkondy — 14 years ago(January 03, 2012 09:13 PM)
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. -
james-mac — 10 years ago(January 26, 2016 02:40 PM)
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.
