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The Deer
Hunter Moive
- Director:
Michael Cimino
- Genre: Drama
- Movie Type: Ensemble Film, Anti-War Film
- Themes: Home From the War, Haunted By the Past
- Main Cast: Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken
- Release Year: 1978
- Country: US
- Run Time: 183 minutes
- MPAA Rating: R
One of several 1978 films dealing with the Vietnam War (including Hal Ashby's Oscar-winning Coming Home), Michael Cimino's
epic second feature The Deer Hunter was both renowned for its tough
portrayal of the war's effect on American working class steel workers
and notorious for its ahistorical use of Russian roulette in the Vietnam
sequences. Structured in five sections contrasting home and war, the
film opens in Clairton, PA, as Mike (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Stan (John Cazale, in his last film) celebrate the wedding of their friend Steve (John Savage)
and go on a final deer hunt before the men leave for Vietnam. Mike
treats hunting as a test of skill, lecturing Stan about the value of
"one shot" deer slaying and brushing off Nick's urgings to appreciate
nature's beauty. As Mike ruminates post-hunt, the film cuts to the
horror of Vietnam, where the men are captured by Vietcong soldiers who
force Mike and Nick to play Russian roulette for the V.C.'s amusement.
Mike turns the game to his advantage so they can escape captivity, but
the men are permanently scarred by the episode. Steve loses his legs;
Nick vanishes in the Saigon Russian roulette parlors. Mike returns alone
to Clairton a changed man, as he rejects the killing of the deer hunt
and finds solace with Nick's old girlfriend Linda (Meryl Streep).
Disgusted by the antics of his male cohorts at home, Mike decides to
bring Steve back from a veterans' hospital, and he returns to Saigon to
find Nick. As Saigon falls, Mike discovers how far gone Nick is; the
survivors gather in Clairton for a funeral breakfast, singing an
impromptu rendition of "God Bless America." ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie
Guide
Review
Realizing that the three-hour film would need to be a prestige event to draw public interest, Universal followed Grease producer Allan Carr's
advice and opened The Deer Hunter for one week for Academy Award
consideration in December 1978, putting off the national opening until
February 1979. The gambit succeeded. The film won the Best Picture prize
from the New York Film Critics' Circle and got nine Academy Award
nominations as it went into national release, including Best Picture,
Best Director, and acting nods for Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep. The movie went on to beat Coming Home
for Best Picture and Best Director and also picked up Oscars for
Walken's performance, Sound, and Editing. As the film's acclaim grew, it
also aroused objections to the depiction of the Vietcong as racist
from, among others, Coming Home star Jane Fonda, as well as criticisms from numerous Vietnam reporters that director Michael Cimino
was ill-informed about real Vietnam experience, not having served in
the war himself. Regardless of the disputes over the veracity of the
Russian roulette scenes, they create an indelible metaphor for warfare
and its atmosphere of sudden, random violence. While the press notes
suggest that the final song was meant to be affirmative, the searing
sense of loss that builds up throughout the film renders it profoundly
ambiguous. This combination of ambivalence, brutality, and controversy
echoed American culture's experience of Vietnam, making The Deer Hunter
an even more telling cultural artifact than may have been intended. The
film's awards and acclaim manifested Hollywood's willingness finally to
reckon one way or another with a war that had been all but absent from
movie screens while it was happening, leading the way for such later
films as Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July
(1989). With the prizes and dissension, The Deer Hunter became a
popular hit, enabling Cimino to have full artistic freedom for his next
film, the financially disastrous Heaven's Gate. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Cast
The Deer Hunter
Wiki The Deer Hunter is an epic 1978 American war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Rusyn American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza. The story takes place in Clairton, a small working class town on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh and then in Vietnam, somewhere in woodland and in Saigon, during the Vietnam War.
The Deer Hunter meditates on the moral and mental consequences
of battle as well as the effects of politically-manipulated patriotism
upon common values (friendship, honor, family) in a tightly-knit community. It deals with such controversial issues as suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, infidelity and mental illness. The scenes of Russian roulette, while highly controversial on release, have been viewed as a metaphor for the Vietnam War itself. The film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director and was named by the American Film Institute as the 53rd Greatest Movie of All Time on the 10th Anniversary Edition of the AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies list. Critics and film historians have often noted how the film is divided
into three equal thirds or acts. Likewise the plot synopsis is also
divided into three acts, spanning the years of 1966-1974.[a 1]
In Clairton, a small working class town in Western Pennsylvania,
in early 1968, Rusyn American steel workers Michael (De Niro), Steven
(Savage), and Nick (Walken), with the support of their friends Stanley
(Cazale), John (Dzundza) and Axel (Aspegren), are preparing for two rites of passage: marriage and military service.
The opening scenes set the character traits of the three main
characters. Michael is the no-nonsense, serious but unassuming leader of
the three, Steven the loving, near-groom, pecked at by his mother for
not wearing a scarf with his tuxedo and Nick is the quiet, introspective
man who loves hunting because, "I like the trees...you know...the way
the trees are..." The recurring theme of "one shot," which is how
Michael prefers to take down a deer, is introduced.
Before the trio ships out, Steven and his girlfriend, Angela (who is
pregnant by another man but loved by Steven nonetheless) get married in
an elaborate Russian Orthodox
wedding. In the meantime, Michael must contain his own feelings for
Nick's lovely but pensive girlfriend Linda (Streep), who has just moved
out of her abusive father's house.
At the wedding reception held at the local VFW,
the guys all get drunk, dance, sing and have a good time, but then
notice an Army Green Beret in full dress uniform sitting at the end of
the bar. Michael buys the soldier a drink and tries to strike up a
conversation with him to find out what Vietnam is like, but the soldier
ignores Michael. After Michael confronts him to explain that he, Steven
and Nick are going to Vietnam, the Green Beret raises his glass and says
"fuck it" to everyone's shock and amazement. Obviously disturbed and
under mental anguish, the Green Beret again toasts them with "fuck it."
After being restrained by the others from starting a fight with the
Green Beret, Michael goes back to the bar with the others and in a
mocking jest to the Green Beret, raises his glass and toasts him with
"fuck it." The Green Beret then glances over at Michael and grins
smugly, knowing exactly what Michael and the others will face.
Later, during the wedding toast to Steven and Angela, a toast with a
tradition of good luck for the couple who drinks from conjoined goblets
without spilling a drop, a drop of blood-red wine unknowingly spills on
her wedding gown, again foreshadowing the coming events. Near the end of
the reception, Nick asks Linda to marry him, and she agrees. Later that
night, after a drunk and naked Michael runs through the streets of
town, Nick chases him down and begs Michael not to leave him "over
there" if anything happens. The next day, Michael and the remaining
friends go deer hunting one last time, and Michael again scores a deer
with "one shot."
[edit] Act II
The film then jumps abruptly to a war-torn village, where U.S.
helicopters attack a communist occupied Vietnamese village with napalm. A
North Vietnamese soldier throws a stick grenade into a hiding place full of civilians. An unconscious Mike (now a staff sergeant
in the Army Special Forces) wakes up to see the NVA soldier shoot a
woman carrying a baby. In revenge Mike burns the NVA with a flame
thrower and then shoots him numerous times with an M16. Meanwhile a unit of UH-1
helicopters drops off several US infantrymen, Nick and Steven among
them. Michael, Steven, and Nick unexpectedly find each other just before
they are captured and held together in a riverside prisoner of war camp
with other US Army and ARVN prisoners. For entertainment, the sadistic guards force their prisoners to play Russian roulette and gamble on the outcome.
All three friends are forced to play. Steven aims the gun above his
head, grazing himself with the bullet and is punished by incarceration
to an underwater cage, full of rats and the bodies of others who earlier
faced the same fate. Michael and Nick manage to kill their captors and
escape. Mike had earlier argued with Nick about whether Steven could be
saved but after killing their captors he rescues Steven.
The three float downriver on a tree branch. An American helicopter
accidentally finds them, but only Nick is able to climb aboard. The
weakened Steven falls back into water and Mike plunges in the water to
rescue him. Unluckily, Steven breaks both legs in the fall. Mike helps
him to reach the river bank, and then carries him through the jungle to
friendly lines. Nick is psychologically damaged and recuperating in a
military hospital in Saigon with no knowledge on the status of his friends. At night, he aimlessly stumbles through the red-light district. At one point, he encounters Julien Grinda (Pierre Segui), a champagne-drinking friendly Frenchman
outside a gambling den where men play Russian roulette for money.
Grinda entices the reluctant Nick to participate, and leads him into the
den. Mike is present in the den, watching the game, but the two friends
do not notice each other at first. When Mike does see Nick, he is
unable to get his attention. Mike cannot catch up with Nick and Grinda
as they speed away.
[edit] Act III
Back in the U.S., Mike returns home but maintains a low profile. He
tells the cab driver to pass by the house where all his friends are
assembled, as he is embarrassed by the fuss made over him by Linda and
the others. Mike goes to a hotel and struggles with his feelings, as he
thinks both Nick and Steven are dead or missing. He eventually visits
Linda and grows close to her, but only because of the friend they both
think they have lost. Mike goes hunting with Axel, John and Stanley one
more time, and after tracking a beautiful deer across the woods, takes
his "one shot" but pulls the rifle up and fires into the air, unable to
take another life. He then sits on a rock escarpment and yells out,
"OK?", which echoes back at him from the opposing rock faces leading
down to the river, signifying his fight with his mental demons over
losing Steven and Nick. He also berates Stanley for carrying around a
small revolver and waving it around, not realizing it is still loaded.
He knows the horror of war and wants no part of it anymore.
Mike is eventually told about Angela, whom he goes to visit at the
home of Steven's mother. She is lethargic and barely responsive. She
writes a phone number on a scrap of paper, which leads Mike to the local
veterans' hospital where Steven has been for several months. He has
lost both his legs and is partially paralyzed. Mike visits Steven, who
reveals that someone in Saigon has been mailing large amounts of cash to
him, and Mike is convinced that it is Nick. Mike brings Steven home to
Angela and then travels to Saigon just before its fall in 1975. He tracks down the Frenchman Grinda, who has made a lot of money from the Russian-roulette-playing American.
He finds Nick in a crowded roulette club, but Nick appears to have no
recollection of his friends or his home in Pennsylvania. Mike sees the
needle tracks on his arm, a sign of drug abuse. He realizes that Nick
thinks he (Michael) and Steven are dead, since he is the only one who
made it back on the helicopter. Mike enters himself in a game of Russian
roulette against Nick, attempting to persuade him to come home, but
Nick's mind is gone. In the last moment, after Mike's attempts to remind
him of their trips hunting together, he finally breaks through, and
Nick recognizes Mike and smiles. Nick then tells Mike, "one shot" and
raises the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger. The bullet is in the
gun chamber and Nick kills himself. Horrified, Michael tries to revive
him to no avail.
[edit] Epilogue
Back in America in 1974, there is a funeral for Nick, whom Michael
brings home, good to his promise. The film ends with the whole cast at
their friends bar, singing "God Bless America" and toasting in Nick's honor.
[edit] Production
[edit] Pre-production
When the movie was being planned during the mid-1970s, Vietnam was still a taboo subject with all major Hollywood studios.[2] According to producer Michael Deeley, the standard response was "no American would want to see a picture about Vietnam".[2] English Company EMI Films (headed by Sir Bernard Delfont) initially arranged financing. Universal got involved with the picture at a much later stage.[4]
Scouts for the film traveled over 100,000 miles by plane, bus, and car
to find locations for filming. The initial budget of the film was $8.5
million.[5]
The picture reunited producers Barry Spikings and Michael Deeley; the two had previously collaborated on the cult classic The Man Who Fell to Earth.
[edit] Development
The film began with a spec script called "The Man Who Came To Play", written by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker. Producer Deeley purchased the first draft script from Garfinkle–Redeker for $19,000.[2]
"The screenplay had struck me as brilliant," wrote Deeley, "but it
wasn't complete. The trick would be to find a way to turn a very clever
piece of writing into a practical, realizable film."[6] After consulting various Hollywood agents, Deeley found writer-director Michael Cimino, represented by Stan Kamen at the William Morris Agency.[6] Deeley was impressed by Cimino's work on Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and "a few visually pleasing TV commercials".[6][7] Cimino himself was confident that he could further develop the principal characters of The Man Who Came To Play without losing the essence of the original.[7] While Garfinkle and Redeker had nothing to do with the writing or filming of The Deer Hunter, they ultimately shared a "Story By" writer's credit with Cimino and Washburn due to a Writers Guild arbitration process.[7]
[edit] Screenplay
Cimino worked for six weeks with Deric Washburn on the script before firing him.[8] Cimino and Washburn had previously collaborated with Stephen Bochco on the screenplay for Silent Running.
According to Cimino, he would call Washburn while on the road scouting
for locations and feed him notes on dialogue and story. Upon reviewing
Washburn's draft, Cimino said, "I came back, and read it and I just
could not believe what I read. It was like it was written by some body
who was... mentally deranged."[8]
Cimino confronted Washburn at the Studio Marquis in LA about the draft
and Washburn supposedly replied that he couldn't take the pressure and
had to go home.[8]
Cimino would later claim to have written the entire screenplay himself,[8] although a WGA arbitration awarded Washburn sole "Screenplay By" credit.[citation needed]
All four writers, Garfinkle, Redeker, Cimino, and Washburn, received an
Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for this film.
In the original script, the roles of Mike and Nick were reversed in
the last half of the film. Nick returns home to Linda, while Mike
remains in Vietnam, sends money home to help Steven, and meets his
tragic fate at the Russian roulette table.[9]
[edit] Casting
- Robert De Niro as S/Sgt. Michael "Mike" Vronsky. Producer Deeley pursued De Niro for The Deer Hunter
because he felt that he needed De Niro's star power to sell a film with
a "gruesome-sounding storyline and a barely known director".[10]
De Niro prepared by socializing with steelworkers in local bars and by
visiting their homes. Cimino would introduce De Niro as his agent, Harry
Ufland. No one recognized him.[8]
De Niro claims this was his most physically-exhausting film. He
explained that the scene where Michael visits Steve in the hospital for
the first time was the most emotional scene that he was ever involved
with.[11]
- Christopher Walken
as Cpl. Nikanor "Nick" Chevotarevich. Walken achieved the withdrawn,
hollow look of his character by eating nothing but rice and bananas. His
performance garnered his first Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor.
- John Savage as Steven Pushkov. Cimino originally wanted Brad Dourif for the role.
- Meryl Streep as Linda. Streep improvised many of her lines.
- John Cazale as Stanley aka "Stosh". All scenes involving Cazale, who had end-stage bone cancer, had to be filmed first. Because of his illness, the studio initially wanted to get rid of him, but his fiancee, Meryl Streep,
and Cimino threatened to walk away if they did. He was also
uninsurable, and according to Streep, De Niro paid for his insurance
because he wanted him in the film. This was his last film, as he died
shortly after filming wrapped.
- George Dzundza as John Welsh
- Chuck Aspegren as Peter "Axel" Axelrod. Aspegren was not an actor,
he was the foreman at an East Chicago steel works visited early in
pre-production by De Niro and Cimino. They were so impressed with him
that they offered him the role. He was the second person to be cast in
the film, after De Niro.[8]
- Shirley Stoler as Steven's mother
- Rutanya Alda as Angela Ludhjduravic-Pushkov
- Amy Wright as Bridesmaid
- Joe Grifasi as Bandleader
[edit] Shooting
This was the first feature film depicting the Vietnam War to be filmed on location in Thailand. All scenes were shot on location (no sound stages).
The cast and crew viewed large amounts of news footage from the war to
ensure authenticity. The film was shot over a period of six months.
Each of the six principal male characters in the movie carried a
photo in their back pocket of them all together as children so as to
enhance the sense of camaraderie amongst them. As well as this, director
Cimino had the props department fashion complete Pennsylvania IDs for each of them, complete with driver's licenses, medical cards and various other pieces of paraphernalia, so as to enhance each actor's sense of their character.
[edit] The Wedding Scenes
The wedding scenes were filmed in the summer, but were set in the fall. To accomplish a look of fall, leaves were removed from trees and painted orange. They were then reattached to the trees.[12] It took five days to film. An actual priest was cast as the priest at the wedding.
The choir featured in the film was the actual choir at the church. They
had to sing the hymns more than 50 times. During filming, director
Cimino encouraged the many extras to treat the festivities as a real
wedding, so as to increase the authenticity of the scenes. Prior to
filming the wedding reception, Cimino instructed the extras to take
empty boxes from home and wrap them as if they were wrapping real
wedding gifts and bring them to the set the next day. The fake gifts
would then be used as props for the wedding reception. The extras did as
they were told, however, when Cimino inspected the "props" he noticed
that the "gifts" were a lot heavier than empty boxes otherwise would be.
Cimino tore the wrapping paper off a few of the packages, only to find
that the extras had in fact wrapped real gifts for the "wedding".
Rutanya Alda actually struck her head quite hard on the doorway during
the first take while being carried out of the reception hall; this is
why the scene includes John Savage warning her in the take which was
used.
[edit] The Bar
The bar was specially constructed in an empty storefront in Mingo Junction, Ohio for $25,000; it later became an actual saloon for local steel mill workers. U.S. Steel
allowed filming inside its Cleveland mill, including placing the actors
around the furnace floor, only after securing a $5 million insurance
policy.
When the guys are leaving the factory and heading to Welsh's Lounge,
Nick (Walken) encourages Michael (De Niro) to drive faster. In real
life, Walken has a phobia of going too fast in cars.
[edit] Hunting the Deer
Dzundza completely blows the toast line when the group arrives in the
mountains the first time. His reaction is legitimate, and a few of the
other actors can be seen laughing in response. According to the film's
cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, the scene where the deer is shot by Michael (De Niro) was filmed by giving the trained deer a sedative;
it took half an hour for the drug to take effect; they had fenced off
an area limiting the deer's range and two cameras were used. The deer which Michael allows to get away was actually an elk - the same one often used on commercials for Hartford Insurance.[13]
The crew had a very difficult time trying to get the elk to look at
them, as it was apparently used to various noises; it finally looked at
them when someone in the crew yawned.
[edit] Vietnam
De Niro and Savage performed their own stunts in the fall into the
river, filming the 30ft drop 15 times in two days. During the helicopter
stunt, the runners caught on the ropes and as the helicopter rose, it
threatened to seriously injure De Niro and Savage. The actors gestured
and yelled furiously to the crew in the helicopter to warn them. Footage
of this is included in the film.[14]
According to Cimino, De Niro requested a live bullet in the revolver
for the scene in which he subjects John Cazale's character to an
impromptu game of Russian roulette, to heighten the intensity of the
situation. Cazale agreed without protest,[8] but obsessively rechecked the gun before each take to make sure that the live round wasn't next in the chamber.
Director Cimino convinced Walken to spit in De Niro's face. When Walken
actually did it, De Niro was completely shocked, as evidenced by his
reaction in the film. In fact, De Niro was so furious about it he nearly
left the set. Cimino later said of Walken, "He's got courage!" The cast
and crew slept on the floor of the warehouse where the Saigon Russian
roulette sequences were shot. The scene where Savage is yelling,
"Michael, there's rats in here, Michael" as he is stuck in the river is
actually Savage yelling at the director because of his fear of rats
which were infesting the river area. He was yelling for the director to
pull him out of the water because of the rats. The slapping in the
Russian roulette sequences was 100% authentic. The actors grew very
agitated by the constant slapping, which, naturally, added to the
realism of the scenes.
[edit] Filming Locations
- St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio. The name plaque is clearly visible in one scene.
- Lemko Hall, Cleveland, Ohio. The wedding banquet. The name is clearly visible in one scene.
- Patpong, Bangkok, Thailand, the area used to represent Saigon's red light district.
- Sai Yok, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand
- North Cascades National Park, Washington State, US.
- Steubenville, Ohio, for some mill and neighborhood shots.
- Struthers, Ohio, for external house and long-range road shots.
- Weirton, West Virginia, for mill and trailer shots.
- The theme song of The Deer Hunter, Stanley Myers's "Cavatina" (also known as "He Was Beautiful"), performed by classical guitarist John Williams, is commonly known as "The Theme from The Deer Hunter".
- The sub-theme music is "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You", a 1967 hit song, sung by Frankie Valli. It is played a few times in this movie.
- During the wedding ceremonies and party, the Eastern Orthodox Church songs such as "Slava" and Russian folk songs such as "Korobushka" and "Katyusha" are played.
- Russian Orthodox funeral music is also employed during Nick's
funeral scene, mainly "Vechnaya pamyat", which means "memory eternal".[15]
[edit] Post production
Director Cimino spent five months mixing the soundtrack. Since this
was his first Dolby film, he was eager to exploit the technology to its
fullest potential. A short battle sequence, for example, (200 feet of
film) took five days to dub. For the re-creation of the American
evacuation of Saigon, he accompanied composer Stanley Myers
to the location and had him listen to the sounds of vehicles, tanks,
and jeep horns as the sequence was being filmed. Myers then composed
music for the sequence in the same key as the horns, so that it would
blend with the images creating one truly bleak experience.
[edit] Release
Deer Hunter was released for a one week engagement in New York and Los Angeles for Oscar consideration on December 8, 1978.[16][17] The film was given a wide release on February 23, 1979[16] and eventually grossed $48,979,328 at the box office.[1]
CBS paid
$3.5 million for three runs of the film. The network later cancelled the
acquisition on the contractually permitted grounds of the film
containing too much violence for US network transmission.[18]
During screenings of the short version of the film, director Cimino
bribed the projectionist to interrupt it, in order to obtain better
reviews of the long version.[8]
[edit] Analysis
[edit] Controversy over Russian Roulette
One of the most talked-about sequences in the film, the Vietcong's use of Russian Roulette with POWs was criticized as being contrived and unrealistic since there were no documented cases of Russian Roulette in the Vietnam War.[19][20]
Director Cimino was also criticized for one-sidedly portraying all the
North Vietnamese as despicable, sadistic racists and killers. Cimino
countered that his film was not political, polemical, literally
accurate, or posturing for any particular point of view.[20] He further defended his position by saying that he had news clippings from Singapore that confirm Russian Roulette was used during the war (without specifying which article).[8]
During the Berlin International Film Festival in 1979, the Soviet
delegation expressed its indignation with the film which, in their
opinion, insulted the Vietnamese people in numerous scenes. The
socialist states felt obliged to voice their solidarity with the “heroic
people of Vietnam”.
They protested against the screening of the film and insisted that it
violated the statutes of the festival, since it in no way contributed to
the “improvement of mutual understanding between the peoples of the
world”.[21]
The ensuing domino effect led to the walk-outs of the Cubans, East
Germans, Bulgarians, Poles and Czechoslovakians, and two members of the
jury resigned in sympathy.
In his review, Roger Ebert defended the artistic license
of Russian Roulette, arguing "it is the organizing symbol of the film:
Anything you can believe about the game, about its deliberately random
violence, about how it touches the sanity of men forced to play it, will
apply to the war as a whole. It is a brilliant symbol because, in the
context of this story, it makes any ideological statement about the war
superfluous."[22]
Film critic & biographer David Thomson
also agrees that the film works despite the controversy: "There were
complaints that the North Vietnamese had not employed Russian roulette.
It was said that the scenes in Saigon were fanciful or imagined. And it
was suggested that De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage were too
old to have enlisted for Vietnam (Savage, the youngest of the three,
was thirty). Three decades later, 'imagination' seems to have stilled
those worries... and The Deer Hunter is one of the great American films."[23]
[edit] Reception
[edit] Critical reaction
The film's initial reviews were largely enthusiastic. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars and called it "one of the most emotionally shattering films ever made."[22] Gene Siskel from the Chicago Tribune
praised the film, saying, "This is a big film, dealing with big issues,
made on a grand scale. Much of it, including some casting decisions,
suggest inspiration by The Godfather."[24] Leonard Maltin also gave the film four stars, calling it a "sensitive, painful, evocative work".[25] Vincent Canby of the New York Times called The Deer Hunter
"a big, awkward, crazily ambitious motion picture that comes as close
to being a popular epic as any movie about this country since The Godfather. It's vision is that of an original, major new filmmaker."[26] David Denby of New York called it "an epic" with "qualities that we almost never see any more — range and power and breadth of experience."[27] Jack Kroll of Time asserted it put director Cimino "right at the center of film culture."[28] Stephen Farber pronounced the film in New West magazine as "the greatest anti-war movie since La Grande Illusion."[28]
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker
wrote a praise-worthy review with some reservations: "[It is] a small
minded film with greatness in it... with an enraptured view of common
life... [but] enraging, because, despite its ambitiousness and scale, it
has no more moral intelligence than the Eastwood action pictures."[28]
The film holds a metascore of 73 on Metacritic, based on 7 reviews,[24] and 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 43 reviews.[29] The RT consensus is:
Its greatness is blunted by its length and one-sided point of view,
but the film's weaknesses are overpowered by Michael Cimino's
sympathetic direction and a series of heartbreaking performances from
Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken.[29]
[edit] Top Ten Lists
Academy Award-winning film director Milos Forman considers The Deer Hunter to be one of the ten greatest films of all time.[32]
[edit] Revisionism following Heaven's Gate
After Cimino's next film, Heaven's Gate, debuted to lacerating reviews, several critics revised their positions on The Deer Hunter. In his book Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate, Steven Bach wrote, "critics seemed to feel obliged to go on the record about The Deer Hunter, to demonstrate that their critical credentials were un-besmirched by having been, as Sarris put it, 'taken in.'"[33]
More recently, BBC film critic Mark Kermode
challenged the film's status among generally-praised film classics:
"There is an unwritten rule in film criticism that certain films are
beyond rebuke. Citizen Kane, Some Like It Hot, 2001, The Godfather Part II...
all these are considered to be classics of such universally accepted
stature... At the risk of being thrown out of the 'respectable film
critics' circle, may I take this opportunity to declare officially that
in my opinion The Deer Hunter is one of the worst films ever made,
a rambling self indulgent, self aggrandising barf-fest steeped in
manipulatively racist emotion, and notable primarily for its farcically
melodramatic tone which is pitched somewhere between shrieking hysteria
and somnambulist somberness."[34]
[edit] Awards
| Academy Awards record |
| 1. Best Supporting Actor, Christopher Walken |
|
| 2. Best Director, Michael Cimino |
|
| 3. Best Editing, Peter Zinner |
|
| 4. Best Picture, Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino, John Peverall |
|
| 5. Best Sound, Richard Portman, William L. McCaughey, Aaron Rochin, C. Darin Knight |
|
| Golden Globe Awards record |
| 1. Best Director, Michael Cimino |
|
| BAFTA Awards record |
| 1. Best Cinematography, Vilmos Zsigmond |
|
| 2. Best Editing, Peter Zinner |
|
The Deer Hunter won Academy Awards in 1978 for Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Cimino), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Christopher Walken), Best Film Editing, and Best Sound.[20][35] In addition, it was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Robert De Niro), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Meryl Streep), Best Cinematography (Vilmos Zsigmond) and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, Louis Garfinkle and Quinn Redeker).[20][35] John Wayne's final public appearance was to present the Best Picture Oscar to The Deer Hunter.[35] It was not a film he was fond of, since it presented a very different view of the Vietnam War than his own movie, The Green Berets, had a decade earlier.[9]
Cimino won the only Golden Globe for The Deer Hunter, for Best Director. Other nominations the film included Best Motion Picture - Drama, De Niro for Best Motion Picture Actor - Drama, Walken for Best Motion Picture Actor in a Supporting Role, Streep for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Supporting Role, and Washburn for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture.[36]
In total, the film garnered 21 awards and 19 nominations.[36]
[edit] Legacy
In 1996, The Deer Hunter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[36][37]
The film ranks 467th in Empire's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time,[38] noting:
Cimino's bold, powerful 'Nam epic goes from blue-collar macho rituals
to a fiery, South East Asian hell and back to a ragged singalong of
America The Beautiful. De Niro holds it together, but Christopher
Walken, Meryl Streep and John Savage are unforgettable.[38]
As of May 27, 2010, The Deer Hunter is #130 on IMDb's List of Top 250 movies as voted by its users.[39]
Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran who became a counselor with the U.S. Department of Labor, thought of the idea of building a National Memorial for Vietnam Veterans after seeing a screening of the film in March 1979, and he established and operated the memorial fund which paid for it.[40] Director Cimino was invited to the memorial's opening.[8]
The deaths of approximately twenty-five people who died playing
Russian roulette were reported as having been influenced by scenes in
the movie.[41] Actor Jacques Segui, who plays Julien, lost a friend in real life to a game of Russian Roulette during the Indo-China War.[9]
[edit] American Film Institute recognition
[edit] Home media release
The Deer Hunter has twice been released on DVD in America. The
first 1998 issue was by Universal, with no extra features and a
non-anamorphic transfer, has since been discontinued.[45]
A second version, part of the "Legacy Series", was released as a
two-disc set on September 6, 2005, with an anamorphic transfer of the
film. The set features a cinematographer's commentary by Vilmos
Zsigmond, deleted and extended scenes, and production notes.[46] The Region 2 version of The Deer Hunter, released in the UK and Japan, features a commentary track from director Michael Cimino.[citation needed] The film was released on HD DVD on December 26, 2006.[47] StudioCanal released the film on the Blu-Ray format in countries other than the United States on March 11, 2009.[48]
[edit] See also
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Art Wallpapers 3d, art Painting Wallpapers
