Heaven's Gate

In Wyoming in 1890 the large ranch owners draw up a list of immigrant settlers and hire men to kill them. The county sheriff tries to stop it. The film builds on a very wide canvas: crowded dance sequences, long transitions, hundreds of extras. The narrative takes on class conflict directly and refuses the usual heroic language of the western. Those choices are both its strength and the reason it failed on release. Michael Cimino directed. The cost overruns and the box office failure are counted among the events that cost the producing studio its independence. It was reconsidered years later in the director's cut. A real warning: allegations of mistreatment of animals during filming were raised, and oversight of animals on American sets was strengthened after that argument. The film also runs close to three and a half hours.