Italianamerican (Part I)
I-MICHAEL CIMINO
THE MAVERICK FROM MADISON AVENUE
Very few directors hold the distinction of singlehandedly bankrupting a studio. Michael Cimino holds the “honour” of bringing down United Artists with “Heaven’s Gate” (1981). Not only did the movie contribute to the death of the “New Hollywood” movement, but also the end of the director’s image of the latest “Hollywood Golden Boy”. Whilst “Heaven’s Gate” is now seen as a masterpiece, his other efforts during the 1980s aren’t assessed in such a favourable light. Were “Year of the Dragon” (1985) and “The Sicilian” (1987) that bad?
Michael Cimino- The Architect turned “Mad Man”
Cimino’s academic background was distinctively different from the rest of his contemporaries. He majored in graphic arts at Michigan State and studied painting as well as architecture at Yale. Without a doubt, his studies heavily influenced his perception of “what would look good in the big screen”.
In the 1960’s he started his career as a director for TV commercials. Whilst, his work was appreciated by clients and allowed him to cultivate what would become his trademarks as a director, his attention to detail and commitment to perfection didn’t go unnoticed- something that would haunt him for years to come.
But one thing cannot be denied: the final results were true crowdpleasers. Just look at lavish production he directed in 1967 for United Airlines.
“Going Hollywood” and “The Deer Hunter”
Though he originally intended to direct “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot”, Clint Eastwood was persuaded to let Cimino sit in the director’s chair. A simple “heist flick” starring a major box office draw, Clint Eastwood, and an Academy Award-nominated young gun, Jeff Bridges”, “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” proved to be a box office success, garnering Bridges his second Oscar nomination.
As the director started to get noticed by movie execs in Los Angeles, he partnered with Deric Washburn to write a screenplay for an ambitious Vietnam war movie. In 1976, Vietnam was still a sensitive issue. No major movie had ever tackled the realities of the conflict from a critic perspective. Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976) and John Flynn’s “Rolling Thunder” (1977) dealt mostly with the aftermath, the impact of war and PTSD on an individual level. Cimino intended to be the first to depict the real war.
Hindsight is a beautiful thing. It’s easy to write in 2020 how lucky the director was in 1978. Yet, the stars seemed to have aligned for Cimino and his Vietnam movie. Casting-wise, the movie benefitted from the departure of it’s leading man, Roy Scheider.
After the success of “Jaws”, Scheider was perceived as a solid leading actor. Under a three-picture deal with Universal, the actor soon clashed with the plot and director. “It’s completely implausible that anyone would go halfway around the world to save a friend”, stated the actor. After his departure from the film, due to creative differences, he was swiftly replaced by Robert DeNiro, 10 years his junior and with a proven track record as a lead actor. Turns out the industry was wrong about Scheider: Cast as lead in William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” (1977), his name alone couldn’t carry the movie, which bombed at the box office.
Another crucial aspect behind “The Deer Hunter’s” success was the marketing campaign orchestrated to promote the movie. Clocking in at 3 hours, Universal thought it had a fiasco in its hands and turned to Allan Carr for help. Carr coined the term “Oscar consultant” and pioneered what is now standard MO for “Oscar Bait”. The movie was released to critics in New York and Los Angeles and aired on TV, via the cable channel “Z”, a niche channel subscribed by many Academy voters.
When the Oscar nominations were announced in January 1979, “The Deer Hunter” was nominated for 9 awards including Best Picture. Traditional advertising focused on the accolades as well as the plot and, as the movie expanded throughout the US, it proved to be a success generating $49m ($175m in 2020) at the box office. The gamble had paid off and in April 1979, the movie won 5 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Cimino.
The impressive fiasco of “Heaven’s Gate”
Touted as “Hollywood’s Golden Boy”, Cimino now had carte blanche to pursue projects that were even more personal. Two weeks after “The Deer Hunter” won big at the Oscars, production started on the director’s follow up “The Johnson County War”, later retitled “Heaven’s Gate”.
Much has been written about how Cimino’s attention to detail, Napoleonic directing style and the ballooning budget that was required to meet his extravaganza. For the readers interested in the details of the story, I recommend the documentary, “Final Cut: The Making & Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate”. I’d rather focus on the merits of the movie.
Political Western
Inspired by the real-life events that took place in Wyoming during the late 19th century, “Heaven’s Gate” is the story of Marshall James Averill, a Harvard educated man, and the killing of immigrant land settlers ordered by cattle barons. Creative liberties are taken, especially in the depiction of Nate Champion, the main antagonist, who is portrayed as a cold-hearted mercenary carrying out the baron’s orders.
In my review of the movie, I described it as “Karl Marx’s Wild Wild West”. I stick to this description. As portrayed in the movie, Jim Averill comes across as a member of the privileged intellectual elite who chooses a path where he can serve the people. He could easily pass by a Democrat these days. On the other side of the spectrum, we have a self-made man, Champion, who remains an outsider because of his background. A Nixon-like Republican, if you will.
The plot becomes even more embroiled in politics when Averill leads the starving and persecuted central and eastern European immigrants in a proletarian uprising against the wealthy and powerful.
If the politics of “The Deer Hunter” are subtle- after all, it’s a movie about friendship that uses the Vietnam war as a vehicle- they are crystal clear in “Heaven’s Gate”. Cimino may have wanted to create his own “Gone With the Wind” but his true intention was to deliver a “Revisionist Western”, the antithesis of the John Wayne vehicles from the past.
By decomposing and reassessing a romanticised period of American history, he created a solid critique and topped it off with a grim finale (SPOILER ALERT): Whilst filled with the urge to spread benevolence and fight for justice, Jim Averill achieves very little. The last scene, set on his yacht finds the leading character weary and stoic. Not even his ideals and social position could right the wrongs of the world.
Sight and Sound-Michael Cimino’s “Barry Lyndon”
Much like Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon”, every single scene, frame and image you see during the whole 3 and half hours of “Heaven’s Gate” could be a painting. This is the result of the joint efforts of the director and acclaimed cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond. The decision to shoot most of the scenes during the “magic hour”, gives every scene yellowish-brown sepia tones that instantly invokes a grim sense of nostalgia: A portrayal of a bygone era that you’ve seen before, but never from this perspective.
In my opinion, “Heaven’s Gate” features one of the finest character introductions ever committed to celluloid: Nate Champion’s carrying out his mission. No words are spoken, only a silhouette through a blank sheet. A single shot. And he walks off. Brilliant.
The movie marked the first of four collaborations between Cimino and acclaimed movie composer and violinist, David Mansfield. The result is a set of solid, American folk, violin driven compositions. It’s one of the movie’s highlights, surpassing “The Deer Hunter’s” soundtrack and matched only by Mansfield work in “Year of the Dragon”.
Flawed casting: Heaven’s Gate real problem
As I mentioned before, Cimino was lucky to have Roy Scheider replaced by DeNiro. He was not so lucky the second time around.
“Heaven’s Gate” boasts an outstanding supporting cast. Cimino reunited with Jeff Bridges and Christopher Walken who, under his direction, delivered Oscar-nominated performances. Walken even won in 1979. The likes of John Hurt, Brad Dourif, Sam Waterston, and a then-unknown Mickey Rourke completed the ensemble. So far so good.
But casting Kris Kristofferson in the leading role of Jim Averill is dubious at best. In the late 1970s, Kristofferson enjoyed an A-list status as an actor. But he lacked the charisma of his contemporaries and it’s painfully obvious in his wooden performance. There’s not a moment during the whole four hours when I remotely cared about his character. Redford, Newman or Hackman would have done a far better job and would have brought some “box office muscle” to the movie.
Then there’s the capricious casting of Isabelle Huppert as Ella Watson. Several names were suggested for the lead female role. Names such as Jane Fonda, Sally Field, and Diane Keaton, all Oscar winners between 1977 and 1979. It was at Cimino’s insistence that Huppert was cast. We can even overlook the fact that the real-life Ella was supposed to have a Scottish accent. But you can’t overlook the fact that Huppert’s thick French accent made some of her character’s lines barely understandable.
The final verdict
As a movie experience, “Heaven’s Gate” is an ambitious feat. A film that should be watched by movie enthusiasts and whose recent reappraisal is warranted. The unfortunate outcome killed Cimino’s ambition, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“Forget it, Stanley. It’s Chinatown”
Regardless of its Palme D’Or nomination at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, Cimino became a Hollywood pariah. His name was associated with a myriad of projects, including the musical drama “Footloose”. As the director requested $250k to re-write the screenplay and insisted on a darker film and extravagant sets, one thing was clear: Michael Cimino hadn’t learned his lesson.
Four years after the “Gate” fiasco, he teamed up with then-screenwriter, Oliver Stone, to adapt Robert Daley’s novel “The Year of the Dragon”.
The movie’s release was met with controversy: members of the Asian American community lambasted “The Year of Dragon” for its blatant depiction of xenophobia and racism. Stone, who in 1983 penned the cult classic “Scarface”, was familiar with this kind of reception. But not even familiarity would prevent this movie to become Cimino’s second box-office in a row.
But how can a pulp movie that is praised by Quentin Tarantino, who remarked that “You forget to breathe during it (the final shootout)!” be bad? How can a film that was so meticulously crafted that tricked Stanley Kubrick into believing that it was shot in New York (it was actually shot in a North Carolina set) bomb at the box office?
The reason is simple: controversy aside, critics were still against Michael Cimino. And there’s plenty to admire and enjoy about “The Year of The Dragon”.
The mean streets of New York
“The Year of The Dragon” follows Capt. Stanley White, played by Mickey Rourke, a Polish American Vietnam war veteran who’s just be assigned to Chinatown. White’s personal mission is clear: to bring down the narcotics trade and the organised Chinese crime in New York. His goal is in direct conflict with Joey Tai’s (a Golden Globe-nominated performance by John Lone) ambitions of becoming the head of the Chinese triad societies.
The plot and execution seem like something that would fare quite well in the 1970s when Cimino first started his career. In fact, the tone and pace of “The Year of The Dragon” is very much in line with the grim and gritty police enforcement tale “The French Connection” (1971) and the pulpy noir “Chinatown” (1974). At the same time, the film is the exact opposite of the glitz and glam shown in “Miami Vice”, a TV show that was at the height of its popularity when the movie was released. Talk about the right movie made at the wrong time.
Stanley White- Decomposing a complex character
Rourke received all the praise and (almost) all the accolades for his performance in “The Wrestler” (2008). But his take on Stanley White warrants equal, if not more, merit. Despite his appearance as a more civilised version of Travis Bickle, White is also a victim of PTSD. The character is arguable the most complex and well constructed to ever be featured in a Cimino movie.
Oliver Stone created a screenplay that establishes the parallelism between the real jungles of Vietnam and the concrete “jungle” that is New York. He would later incorporate the similarities in “Wall Street” (1987). A great example of this analogy is captured in the brilliant dialogue. White’s superior states that “You’re not in Vietnam here, Stanley,” to which he replies, “There, I never saw the goddamn enemy. Here, they’re right in front of my eyes. They got no place to hide, no jungle.”
Detractors at the time missed the point of the movie’s usage of racism and xenophobia. They are part of Cimino’s ethos and the recurring motif of his filmography: The deconstruction of the very foundations of American society and how ingrained racism is in both the law and structure.
Stan White hides behind his decorated career as a police officer to mask his true intentions, the ends justify the means, and his life mantra: winning as opposed to the right thing. He is selfish, callous and indifferent to his surroundings and uses stereotypes to speed up his decision process. “I hated you in Vietnam”, Stan says to Chinese American reporter, Tracey Tzu, showing how obsessed and narrow-minded he is.
Much like “The Deer Hunter” and “Heaven’s Gate”, “The Year of The Dragon” finds the director taking a stab at the American bravado and gung-ho attitude. In fact, Stan White remark, “There’s a new marshall in town”, about his newly appointed role says all you need to know about the character’s take on life and work.
Mirroring the real-life conclusion of Vietnam, the movie ends on a grim note. Though unlike the Vietnam war, Stan White manages to win, he surely doesn’t feel like a winner. There’s no catharsis, no real lesson learned. Only a phyric victory that took a very personal toll on him.
The final verdict
An ambitious adaptation that deserves more recognition. Shorter than his earlier efforts, “The Year of The Dragon” is Cimino’s most accessible movie. David Mansfield once again delivers a top-notch soundtrack, one that is some ways is closer to “The Deer Hunter”. “Stan’s Theme” is second only to Stanley Myer’s “Cavatina” when it comes to the best classical guitar track to be featured in a Cimino movie.
My main issue with the movie is the casting of Ariane Koizumi as Tracey Tzu. Her stale performance ruins every scene she’s in. There’s no chemistry whatsoever with Mickey Rourke and considering the amount of screen time they share, her performance is the most visible flaw in an otherwise great movie.
“The Godfather Part III”-ish
As early as 1978, Paramount was keen to produce a third entry of the popular and profitable “The Godfather” saga. Francis Ford Coppola refused, though he eventually directed “The Godfather Part III” (1990) and the studio tried to pursue the project with a different director. Following his hit, “The Deer Hunter”, Michael Cimino was one of the names associated with the project, which remained in “development hell” until the late 1980s.
In 1984, Mario Puzo, the author of “The Godfather”, published “The Sicilian”. The book was set in the same universe as Puzo’s epic about the Corleone’s and was somewhat of spin-off, covering Michael Corleone’s exile in Sicily and how his paths crossed with the real-life mafioso, Salvatore Giuliano.
It’s easy to understand why Cimino said yes to Gladden Entertainment when they chose him to helm the project. Being involved in a “Godfather” follow up could be his way to get back at the top. Due to copyright issues, all references to Michael Corleone and Pete Clemenza had to be removed.
Personally, I think that had it not been the case the movie could be even worse: In 1986, Al Pacino, who had played Michael Corleone, had just started his four-year movie hiatus. Recasting an iconic character would have been a very difficult task.
A shot at redemption
“The Sicilian” could have worked as a standalone Mario Puzo adaption, without the Corleone tie-in. In fact, the first 15 minutes of the movie are very good: the cinematography that conveys the sense of a modern-day Western set in Sicily, the powerful shot of a ricochet of blood and Cimino’s most innovative camera work since “Heaven’s Gate”- Camila’s introduction gives us a glimpse of how the director can deliver when he wants to.
The reason why these first few minutes of pristine filmmaking work is the absence of dialogue from Salvatore Giuliano. By now, readers can guess what ruins the movie: the casting. French native Christopher Lambert was an adequate choice for “Highlander” (1986), but his conspicuous accent was a disaster as he took the role of Giuliano. Again, the casting decision was made by Cimino himself, and not even Terence Stamp’s supporting role can salvage “The Sicilian”.
Whilst poor casting is the major flaw in “Heaven’s Gate” and “The Year of The Dragon” they still work as movies That’s just not the case with “The Sicilian”. It’s just an amalgamation of shots, a confusing plot that doesn’t work on any level.
As a source material, Puzo’s book is rich with political conflict and power struggles, two topics Cimino had tackled in all of his movies. For reasons unknown, he shies away from exploring these angles in the final movie.
The final movie was the third box office bomb in a row and Cimino’s first movie that failed to receive any praise from critics across the globe. If “Heaven’s Gate” marked the director’s decline, “The Sicilian” proved he had reached the point of no return.
Epilogue
Michael Cimino would direct two additional movies, “Desperate Hours” (1990) and “Sunchaser” (1996), before passing away in 2016. Both releases were met with indifference by critics and audiences alike and bombed at the box office. Surprisingly enough the long list of Cimino’s unmade projects is far more interesting than his career post-1985.
Had “Heaven Gate” triumphed at the box office, Cimino had plans to direct an adaptation of Frederick Manfred’s Western novel, “Conquering Horse”. Rumours around the production, suggest that the director would have shot the movie entirely using Sioux language. Were audiences in the 1980’s receptive to such a bold venture?
Perhaps two of the most intriguing unrealised projects that Michael Cimino was associated with were the adaptions of “Atlas Shrugged” and a remake of “The Fountainhead”. Considering the controversial source material authored by the infamous philosopher Ayn Rand, it would have been interesting to see the director bring to life two stories that deal with politics and society-fields that Cimino always tried to incorporate in his movies.
“The Fountainhead” had been adapted to the big screen in 1949 to a muted response from audiences and critics. “Atlas Shrugged”, on the other hand, remained a hot property. In 1972, Albert S. Ruddy, the producer of “The Godfather”, had tried to produce a movie adaption, with no luck. It would take 40 years before the project would see the light of day.
The last big profile project that had Cimino’s attached was another literary adaption. André Malraux “Man’s Fate”, a novel about the anti-communist uprising in Shanghai during the late 1920s, would again see the director exploring the social-political implications of a major historical event.
One can speculate about what could have been of Michael Cimino’s career. His work has been reassessed and praised. Jeff Bridges, Mickey Rourke, and Kris Kristofferson have defended the director and take pride in their collaborations. He had many opportunities to make a comeback. Perhaps he just needed the right project and a strong collaborator that would keep his ego in line.