Heaven's Gate (1980) on Netflix

R19803h 37mAdventure Drama Western

James Averill is marshal of Johnson County, Wyoming, where immigrant settlers clash with cattle barons. Nate Champion enforces for the stockmen, and both men are drawn to Ella Watson, a madam.

Netflix3.3/5
IMDb6.7/1019,371 votes
Rotten Tomatoes57%

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Plot summary

In 1870 Jim Averill and Billy Irvine finish their studies at Harvard College, where the Reverend Doctor addresses the graduates about education and the cultivated mind, and Irvine replies with irreverent views. Twenty years later Averill is the marshal of Johnson County, Wyoming. Poor European immigrants have taken land there, and the wealthy ranchers of the stock growers' association believe the settlers are rustling their herds. Nate Champion, a friend of Averill's, works as an enforcer for those ranchers. Both men are drawn to Ella Watson, a madam from Quebec whose bordello takes stolen cattle as payment. At a board meeting Frank Canton, who heads the association, sets out a plan to kill 125 named settlers, and the drunken Irvine carries word of it to Averill.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Heaven's Gate (1980)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

According to film historians such as Peter Biskind, the financial failure of Heaven's Gate ended director-driven film production in the American film industry in favour of greater studio control, and led Transamerica to sell United Artists to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, ending UA's existence as an independent studio.
Heaven's Gate was marred by accusations of animal cruelty; the American Humane Association, barred from monitoring the animals on set, detailed the abuses and organized boycott picket lines, and the outcry led the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to authorize the AHA to monitor animals in all filmed media afterwards.
Michael Cimino shot more than 1.3 million feet of footage for Heaven's Gate, nearly 220 hours, which cost the studio roughly $200,000 per day in salaries, locations and acting fees.
A street built to Cimino's precise specifications for Heaven's Gate was torn down because it reportedly didn't look right; it needed to be six feet wider, and although the set construction boss said moving one side would be cheaper, Cimino insisted both sides be dismantled and moved back three feet.
Director Michael Cimino submitted an original script in 1971, then titled The Johnson County War, but the project was shelved when it failed to attract big-name talent, and John Wayne turned down the lead role.
Actor John Hurt reportedly spent so long waiting around on the production for something to do that he went off and made The Elephant Man for David Lynch in the interim, then came back to shoot more scenes for Heaven's Gate.
Harvard University refused to allow Heaven's Gate to be shot there, reportedly because of Cimino's excessive demands for the film set, so the film's 1870 Harvard graduation prologue was shot at the University of Oxford instead.
In 1982, Z Channel aired the 219-minute 1980 premiere version of Heaven's Gate, the first time the longer version was widely exhibited, and dubbed it the "director's cut"; critic F.X. Feeney later said that broadcast first popularized the concept of a director's cut.