Heaven's Gate (4 Stars)

This is an epic western, made in 1980, about the Johnson County War of 1890, in which hundreds of settlers from Eastern Europe were slaughtered by land owners. It follows the life of Jim Averill, a wealthy Harvard graduate who's been sent to Casper, Wyoming to supervise the hanging of a criminal. He becomes sympathetic with the plight of poor settlers from Eastern Europe after seeing a woman being beat up in the street.

The problem is that wealthy cattle owners let their animals graze on empty land between the mountains. When settlers arrived and staked claims, there was less land available. In addition, some settlers were accused of stealing cattle for food. The penalty for stealing a cow was execution without trial. That was within the law, because both the mayor and the sheriff of Casper approved of strict measures to combat anarchy. The most important organisation in the county was the Stock Growers Association, to which the mayor and the sheriff both belonged.

Averill finds out that 50 gunmen have been hired from Texas to carry out a final solution. A list has been made of 125 people who are to be killed. Averill's girlfriend Ella is also on the list. He organises a resistance, putting weapons in the hands of the settlers, but even though they outnumber the gunmen four to one their lack of skill puts them at a disadvantage.

"Heaven's Gate" is infamous for having been the biggest financial flop in film history at the time it was made, losing $40 million. It's blamed for having killed off the western as a film genre. The critics also hated it, some calling it one of the worst films ever made.

Maybe the problem for the critics was the film cuts. The original version was five and a half hours long, but it was cut to three and a half hours for the theatrical release. After only a week in the cinemas the film was withdrawn, and a year later it was re-released as a two and a half hour version. The version I watched today is dubbed the Director's Cut and was released on disc in 2012. It's three and a half hours long, but supposedly differs significantly from the original theatrical release.

How can you expect a film to retain its quality after such savage cuts? Certain things in the film weren't clear to me, and I'm convinced that my questions would be answered if I saw the additional two hours of footage. When Averill arrives in Casper and visits the Stock Growers Association, the sheriff tells him he's been barred from their meetings. When? Why? Averill seems to have a history in Casper. Everyone knows him.

Averill is also friends with Nate Champion, an enforcer for the Stock Growers Association. In an early scene Champion carries Averill back to his hotel when he's drunk. Friendships across enemy lines don't just happen. The two men have a history, and it looks like this history has been edited out.

Many critics today have reevaluated the film, based on the Director's Cut. I don't see anything particularly bad about it.

Before watching the film I knew nothing about the Johnson County War. Wikipedia's page is informative as a brief summary. The main characters of the film were real life people, but the film has changed the background of the main characters, Averill and his girlfriend. That's remarkable. In real life Ella Watson was a seamstress and a landowner, but the film portrays her as the owner of a brothel. She died childless, otherwise her descendants would be suing the film for slander.

Success Rate:  - 12.6

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