Days of Heaven

Days of Heaven (1978) is set in Texas in 1916. A worker who has been in a fight at a Chicago steel mill runs with his girlfriend and his young sister. They find work on the wheat harvest. The farmer who owns the land is young and ill and takes an interest in the woman. The man had introduced her as his sister, and he makes a plan. The real event is the image. Cinematographer Néstor Almendros shot much of it during what is called magic hour. He used to correct the term: it is a euphemism, because it is not an hour but twenty five minutes at most. The crew worked in a window of roughly twenty minutes a day. When Almendros had to leave for another Truffaut film, Haskell Wexler finished the shoot. Wexler shot approximately half of the finished film and received only an additional photography credit. He protested and sent Roger Ebert documentation of his work. He eventually accepted the arrangement, saying that Almendros had set the tone of the film and deserved the primary credit. Malick spent two years editing. He struggled to assemble the footage and found the solution in Linda Manz's improvised narration. By producer Bert Schneider's account the edit took so long that director Richard Brooks cast, shot, cut and released Looking for Mr. Goodbar in the meantime. It won the Academy Award for Cinematography and was nominated for score, costume design and sound. Malick won Best Director at Cannes in 1979. It runs 94 minutes. Good for: visual poetry, Malick, and period filmmaking. Less good for: the plot is very thin and the characters' interiors are delivered only through narration. There is little dialogue. The film keeps its emotional distance, and for many viewers that coldness is never crossed.