Considered both a "disaster" and a "masterpiece", the film was released in 1980 after a difficult production, punctuated by scandals and huge expectations from the Oscar-winning director of The Deer Hunter. Heaven's Gate proved to be a massive failure at the box office, one of the greatest in film history: out of the approximately 44 million dollars spent (the equivalent of 122 million today), the producers recovered just a bit over 3 million. The American critics were ruthless. But the Cannes Film Festival included it in the race for the Palme d'Or, and the European critics perceived it as one of the most unorthodox and challenging Westerns ever made.
Last fall, the legendary Heaven's Gate was reissued in a digitally restored 216 minute long version, the director's cut, and presented in Venice, in the presence of Michael Cimino. The Festival director, Alberto Barbera, described the film as "an absolute masterpiece," "massacred" by the producers' cut, one of the greatest injustices in the history of cinema. Heaven's Gate is a western inspired by the1890 war in Johnson County, when the Wyoming land owners killed the immigrants who came to settle there. The cast included Kris Kristofferson – whose career was ruined by the movie, Christopher Walken, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Geoffrey Lewis, David Mansfield, Richard Masur, Terry O'Quinn, Mickey Rourke and Willem Dafoe.
