Days of Heaven
Encyclopedia
Days of Heaven is a 1978 American romantic drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick
and starring Richard Gere
, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard
and Linda Manz
. Set in the early 20th century, it tells the story of two poor lovers, Bill and Abby, as they travel to the Texas Panhandle
to harvest crops for a wealthy farmer. Bill encourages Abby to claim the fortune of the dying farmer by tricking him into a false marriage. This results in an unstable love triangle and a series of unfortunate events.
Days of Heaven is widely recognized as a landmark of 1970s cinema.
manual laborer, knocks down and kills a boss in the steel mill
where he works. He flees to the Texas Panhandle
with his girlfriend Abby (Adams) and younger sister Linda (Manz). Bill and Abby pretend to be siblings to prevent gossip.
The three hire on as part of a large group of seasonal workers with a rich, shy farmer (Shepard). The farmer learns that he is dying of an unspecified disease. When he falls in love with Abby, Bill encourages her to marry him so that they can inherit his money after he dies. The marriage takes place and Bill stays on the farm as Abby's "brother." The farmer's foreman suspects their scheme. The farmer's health unexpectedly remains stable, foiling Bill's plans.
Eventually, the farmer discovers Bill's true relationship with Abby. At the same time, Abby has begun to fall in love with her new husband. After a locust
swarm and a fire destroy his wheat fields, the farmer goes after Bill with a gun, but Bill kills him. Bill then flees with Abby and Linda. The foreman and the police pursue and eventually find them, and the police kill Bill. Abby leaves Linda at a boarding school and goes off on her own.
to filmmaker Terrence Malick in 1975. On a trip to Cuba
, Schneider and Malick began conversations that would lead to the development of Days of Heaven. Malick had tried and failed to get Dustin Hoffman
or Al Pacino
to star in the film. Schneider agreed to produce the film. He and Malick cast a young Richard Gere, actor and playwright
Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams. Paramount Pictures
CEO Barry Diller
wanted Schneider to produce films for him and agreed to finance Days of Heaven. At the time, the studio was headed in a new direction. They were hiring new production heads who had worked in network television, and, according to former production chief Richard Sylbert
, "[manufacturing] product aimed at your knees". Despite the change in direction, Schneider was able to secure a deal with Paramount by guaranteeing the budget and taking personal responsibility for all overages. "Those were the kind of deals I liked to make", Schneider said, "because then I could have final cut and not talk to nobody about why we're gonna use this person instead of that person."
Malick admired cinematographer Nestor Almendros
' work on The Wild Child
and wanted him to shoot Days of Heaven. He was impressed by Malick's knowledge of photography and willingness to use little studio lighting. The two men modeled the film's cinematography after silent films, which often used natural light. They also drew inspiration from painters such as Johannes Vermeer
, Edward Hopper
(particularly his House by the Railroad), and Andrew Wyeth
, as well as photo-reporters from the turn of the century.
on the prairie
of Alberta
, Canada and a final scene shot on the grounds of Heritage Park Historical Village
in Calgary
. Jack Fisk
designed and built the mansion from plywood
in the wheat fields and the smaller houses where the workers lived. The mansion was not a facade, as was normally the custom, but authentically recreated inside and out with period colors: brown, mahogany and dark wood for the interiors. Patricia Norris designed and made the period costumes from used fabrics and old clothes to avoid the artificial look of studio-made costumes.
According to Almendros, the production was not "rigidly prepared", allowing for improvisation. Daily call sheets were not very detailed and the schedule changed to suit the weather. This upset some of the Hollywood crew members not used to working in such a spontaneous way. Most of the crew were used to a "glossy style of photography" and felt frustrated because Almendros did not give them much work. On a daily basis, he asked them to turn off the lights they had prepared for him. Some crew members said that Almendros and Malick did not know what they were doing. Some of the crew quit the production. Malick supported what Almendros was doing and pushed the look of the film further, taking away more lighting aids, and leaving the image bare. Due to union regulations in North America, Almendros was not allowed to operate the camera. With Malick, he would plan out and rehearse movements of the camera and the actors. Almendros would stand near the main camera and give instructions to the camera operators.
Almendros was losing his eyesight by the time shooting began. To evaluate his setups, "he had one of his assistants take Polaroids
of the scene, then examined them through very strong glasses". According to Almendros, Malick wanted "a very visual movie. The story would be told through visuals. Very few people really want to give that priority to image. Usually the director gives priority to the actors and the story, but here the story was told through images". Much of the film would be shot during "magic hour", which Almendros called
Almendros said,
For the shot in the "locusts" sequence, where the insects rise into the sky, the filmmakers dropped peanut shells from helicopters. They had the actors walk backwards while running the film in reverse through the camera. When it was projected, everything moved forward except the locusts. For the closeups and insert shots, thousands of live locusts were used which had been captured and supplied by the Canadian Department of Agriculture.
While the photography yielded exquisite results, the rest of the production was difficult from the start. The actors and crew reportedly viewed Malick as cold and distant. After two weeks of shooting, Malick was so disappointed with the dailies, he "decided to toss the script, go Leo Tolstoy
instead of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, wide instead of deep [and] shoot miles of film with the hope of solving the problems in the editing room." In addition, the harvesting machines constantly broke down, which resulted in shooting beginning late in the afternoon, allowing for only a few hours of daylight before it was too dark to go on. One day, two helicopter
s were scheduled to drop peanut shells that were to simulate locusts on film; however, Malick decided to shoot period cars instead. He kept the helicopters on hold at great cost. Production was lagging behind, with costs exceeding the budget by about $800,000, and Schneider had already mortgaged his home in order to cover the overages.
The production ran so late that both Almendros and camera operator John Bailey
had to leave due to a prior commitment on François Truffaut
's The Man Who Loved Women
. Almendros approached his friend and renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler
to complete the film. They worked together for a week so that Wexler could get familiar with the film's visual style. Wexler was careful to match Almendros' work, but he did make some exceptions. "I did some hand held shots on a Panaflex", he said, "[for] the opening of the film in the steel mill. I used some diffusion. Nestor didn't use any diffusion. I felt very guilty using the diffusion and having (sic) the feeling of violating a fellow cameraman." Though half the finished picture was footage shot by Wexler, he received only credit for "additional photography", much to his chagrin. The credit denied him any chance of an Academy Award for his work on Days of Heaven. He sent critic Roger Ebert
a letter "in which he described sitting in a theater with a stopwatch to prove that more than half of the footage" was his.
. According to Schneider, the editing for Days of Heaven took so long that "Brooks cast Gere, shot, edited and released [Looking for Mr. Goodbar] while Malick was still editing". A breakthrough came when Malick experimented with voice-overs from Linda Manz's character, similar to what he had done with Sissy Spacek
in Badlands
. According to editor Billy Weber
, Malick jettisoned much of the film's dialogue, replacing it with Manz's voice-over, which served as an oblique commentary on the story.
After a year, Malick had to call the actors to Los Angeles to shoot inserts of shots that were necessary but had not been filmed in Alberta. The finished film thus includes close-up
s of Shephard that were shot under a freeway overpass. The underwater shot of Gere's falling face down into the river was shot in a large aquarium in Sissy Spacek
's living room.
Meanwhile, Schneider was upset with Malick. He had confronted Malick numerous times about missed deadlines and broken promises. Due to further cost overruns, he had to ask Paramount for more money, which he preferred not to do. When they screened a demo for Paramount and made their pitch, the studio was impressed and reportedly "gave Malick a very sweet deal at the studio, carte blanche, essentially".
Malick was not able to capitalize on the deal. He was so exhausted from working on the film that he moved to Paris with his girlfriend. He tried developing another project for Paramount, but after a substantial amount of work, he abandoned it. He did not make another film until 1998's The Thin Red Line
twenty years later.
, Harold C. Schonberg wrote, "Days of Heaven never really makes up its mind what it wants to be. It ends up something between a Texas pastoral and Cavalleria Rusticana
. Back of what basically is a conventional plot is all kinds of fancy, self-conscious cineaste techniques." Dave Kehr
of The Chicago Reader
wrote: "Terrence Malick's remarkably rich second feature is a story of human lives touched and passed over by the divine, told in a rush of stunning and precise imagery. Nestor Almendros
's cinematography is as sharp and vivid as Malick's narration is elliptical and enigmatic. The result is a film that hovers just beyond our grasp—mysterious, beautiful, and, very possibly, a masterpiece". Gene Siskel
of The Chicago Tribune also wrote that the film "truly tests a film critic's power of description ... Some critics have complained that the Days of Heaven story is too slight. I suppose it is, but, frankly, you don't think about it while the movie is playing". Time
magazine's Frank Rich
wrote, "Days of Heaven is lush with brilliant images". The periodical went on to name it one of the best films of 1978.
Nick Schager of Slant Magazine
has called it "the greatest film ever made." Roger Ebert
described the movie as "one of the most beautiful films ever made" and added it on his list of Great Movies.
Days of Heaven held a 93% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes
with an average rating of 8.2/10 based on 45 reviews.
. Per Academy custom the award was given in the name of principal photographer Nestor Almendros
. This was somewhat controversial as renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler
also received credit on the film. The film was also nominated for Academy Awards for Costume Design
, Original Score
, and Sound (John Wilkinson
, Robert W. Glass, Jr.
, John T. Reitz
and Barry Thomas
). Malick won the Prix de la mise en scène
(Best Director award) at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival
. Furthermore, he was named the best director by the National Society of Film Critics
.
In 2007, Days of Heaven was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....
and starring Richard Gere
Richard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...
, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
and Linda Manz
Linda Manz
Linda Manz is an American actress, mainly active between 1978 and 1985.-Career:In 1976, at the age of fifteen, she was cast by Terrence Malick to play the young narrator in his second film Days of Heaven, which was released in 1978...
. Set in the early 20th century, it tells the story of two poor lovers, Bill and Abby, as they travel to the Texas Panhandle
Texas Panhandle
The Texas Panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a rectangular area bordered by New Mexico to the west and Oklahoma to the north and east...
to harvest crops for a wealthy farmer. Bill encourages Abby to claim the fortune of the dying farmer by tricking him into a false marriage. This results in an unstable love triangle and a series of unfortunate events.
Days of Heaven is widely recognized as a landmark of 1970s cinema.
Plot
The story is set in 1916. Bill (Gere), a ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
manual laborer, knocks down and kills a boss in the steel mill
Steel mill
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel.Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. It is produced in a two-stage process. First, iron ore is reduced or smelted with coke and limestone in a blast furnace, producing molten iron which is either cast into pig iron or...
where he works. He flees to the Texas Panhandle
Texas Panhandle
The Texas Panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a rectangular area bordered by New Mexico to the west and Oklahoma to the north and east...
with his girlfriend Abby (Adams) and younger sister Linda (Manz). Bill and Abby pretend to be siblings to prevent gossip.
The three hire on as part of a large group of seasonal workers with a rich, shy farmer (Shepard). The farmer learns that he is dying of an unspecified disease. When he falls in love with Abby, Bill encourages her to marry him so that they can inherit his money after he dies. The marriage takes place and Bill stays on the farm as Abby's "brother." The farmer's foreman suspects their scheme. The farmer's health unexpectedly remains stable, foiling Bill's plans.
Eventually, the farmer discovers Bill's true relationship with Abby. At the same time, Abby has begun to fall in love with her new husband. After a locust
Locust
Locusts are the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. These are species that can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory...
swarm and a fire destroy his wheat fields, the farmer goes after Bill with a gun, but Bill kills him. Bill then flees with Abby and Linda. The foreman and the police pursue and eventually find them, and the police kill Bill. Abby leaves Linda at a boarding school and goes off on her own.
Cast
- Richard GereRichard GereRichard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...
as Bill - Brooke Adams as Abby
- Sam ShepardSam ShepardSam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...
as The Farmer - Linda ManzLinda ManzLinda Manz is an American actress, mainly active between 1978 and 1985.-Career:In 1976, at the age of fifteen, she was cast by Terrence Malick to play the young narrator in his second film Days of Heaven, which was released in 1978...
as Linda - Robert J. WilkeRobert J. WilkeRobert J. Wilke was a prolific American film actor noted primarily for his villainous roles, mainly in westerns.Wilke started as a stuntman in the 1930s and his first appearance on screen was in San Francisco...
as The Farm Foreman - Jackie Shultis as Linda's Friend
- Stuart MargolinStuart MargolinStuart Margolin is an American film and television actor and director.-Television:Margolin is best known for his role on the television show The Rockford Files, playing Evelyn "Angel" Martin, the shifty friend and former cellmate of Jim Rockford...
as Mill Foreman - Timothy Scott as Harvest Hand
- Gene Bell as Dancer
- Doug KershawDoug KershawDoug Kershaw, born January 24, 1936, is an American fiddle player, singer and songwriter from Louisiana. Active since 1949, Kershaw has recorded fifteen albums and charted on the Hot Country Songs charts.- Early life :...
as Fiddler - Richard LibertiniRichard LibertiniRichard Libertini is an American stage, film and television actor known for playing numerous character roles and his ability to speak in numerous accents....
as Vaudeville Leader
Production
Producer Jacob Brackman introduced fellow producer Bert SchneiderBert Schneider
Berton "Bert" Schneider is an American movie producer, who was behind a number of important and topical films of the late-1960s and early-1970s. The son of Abraham Schneider, onetime president of Columbia Pictures, the younger Schneider tended toward the rebellious. He briefly attended Cornell...
to filmmaker Terrence Malick in 1975. On a trip to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, Schneider and Malick began conversations that would lead to the development of Days of Heaven. Malick had tried and failed to get Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
or Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
to star in the film. Schneider agreed to produce the film. He and Malick cast a young Richard Gere, actor and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams. Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
CEO Barry Diller
Barry Diller
Barry Charles Diller is the Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp and the media executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting.-Early life:...
wanted Schneider to produce films for him and agreed to finance Days of Heaven. At the time, the studio was headed in a new direction. They were hiring new production heads who had worked in network television, and, according to former production chief Richard Sylbert
Richard Sylbert
Richard Sylbert was an Academy Award-winning production designer and art director, primarily for feature films....
, "[manufacturing] product aimed at your knees". Despite the change in direction, Schneider was able to secure a deal with Paramount by guaranteeing the budget and taking personal responsibility for all overages. "Those were the kind of deals I liked to make", Schneider said, "because then I could have final cut and not talk to nobody about why we're gonna use this person instead of that person."
Malick admired cinematographer Nestor Almendros
Néstor Almendros
Néstor Almendros, ASC was an Oscar winning Spanish cinematographer. One of the highest appraised contemporary cinematographers, "Almendros was an artist of deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light...he will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute...
' work on The Wild Child
The Wild Child
The Wild Child is a French film by director François Truffaut. The film features Jean-Pierre Cargol, François Truffaut, Françoise Seigner and Jean Dasté. The film had a total of 1,458,164 admissions in France...
and wanted him to shoot Days of Heaven. He was impressed by Malick's knowledge of photography and willingness to use little studio lighting. The two men modeled the film's cinematography after silent films, which often used natural light. They also drew inspiration from painters such as Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
, Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
(particularly his House by the Railroad), and Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....
, as well as photo-reporters from the turn of the century.
Principal photography
Production began in the fall of 1976. Though the film was set in Texas, the exteriors were shot in Whiskey Gap, a ghost townGhost town
A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...
on the prairie
Prairie
Prairies are considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type...
of Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, Canada and a final scene shot on the grounds of Heritage Park Historical Village
Heritage Park Historical Village
Heritage Park Historical Village is a historical park located in Calgary, Alberta. The park is located on of parkland on the banks of the Glenmore Reservoir, along the city's southwestern edge. As Canada's largest living history museum by number of exhibits, it is one of the city's most visited...
in Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
. Jack Fisk
Jack Fisk
Jack Fisk is an American movie industry professional, frequently working as either a production designer or art director on Hollywood movies.Fisk met Sissy Spacek when working on Terrence Malick's 1973 movie Badlands...
designed and built the mansion from plywood
Plywood
Plywood is a type of manufactured timber made from thin sheets of wood veneer. It is one of the most widely used wood products. It is flexible, inexpensive, workable, re-usable, and can usually be locally manufactured...
in the wheat fields and the smaller houses where the workers lived. The mansion was not a facade, as was normally the custom, but authentically recreated inside and out with period colors: brown, mahogany and dark wood for the interiors. Patricia Norris designed and made the period costumes from used fabrics and old clothes to avoid the artificial look of studio-made costumes.
According to Almendros, the production was not "rigidly prepared", allowing for improvisation. Daily call sheets were not very detailed and the schedule changed to suit the weather. This upset some of the Hollywood crew members not used to working in such a spontaneous way. Most of the crew were used to a "glossy style of photography" and felt frustrated because Almendros did not give them much work. On a daily basis, he asked them to turn off the lights they had prepared for him. Some crew members said that Almendros and Malick did not know what they were doing. Some of the crew quit the production. Malick supported what Almendros was doing and pushed the look of the film further, taking away more lighting aids, and leaving the image bare. Due to union regulations in North America, Almendros was not allowed to operate the camera. With Malick, he would plan out and rehearse movements of the camera and the actors. Almendros would stand near the main camera and give instructions to the camera operators.
Almendros was losing his eyesight by the time shooting began. To evaluate his setups, "he had one of his assistants take Polaroids
Instant film
Instant film is a type of photographic film first introduced by Polaroid that is designed to be used in an instant camera...
of the scene, then examined them through very strong glasses". According to Almendros, Malick wanted "a very visual movie. The story would be told through visuals. Very few people really want to give that priority to image. Usually the director gives priority to the actors and the story, but here the story was told through images". Much of the film would be shot during "magic hour", which Almendros called
"a euphemism, because it's not an hour but around 25 minutes at the most. It is the moment when the sun sets, and after the sun sets and before it is night. The sky has light, but there is no actual sun. The light is very soft, and there is something magic about it. It limited us to around twenty minutes a day, but it did pay on the screen. It gave some kind of magic look, a beauty and romanticism".This "magic look" would extend to interior scenes, which often utilized natural light.
Almendros said,
"In this period there was no electricity. It was before electricity was invented and consequently there was less light. Period movies should have less light. In a period movie the light should come from the windows because that is how people lived."
For the shot in the "locusts" sequence, where the insects rise into the sky, the filmmakers dropped peanut shells from helicopters. They had the actors walk backwards while running the film in reverse through the camera. When it was projected, everything moved forward except the locusts. For the closeups and insert shots, thousands of live locusts were used which had been captured and supplied by the Canadian Department of Agriculture.
While the photography yielded exquisite results, the rest of the production was difficult from the start. The actors and crew reportedly viewed Malick as cold and distant. After two weeks of shooting, Malick was so disappointed with the dailies, he "decided to toss the script, go Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
instead of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, wide instead of deep [and] shoot miles of film with the hope of solving the problems in the editing room." In addition, the harvesting machines constantly broke down, which resulted in shooting beginning late in the afternoon, allowing for only a few hours of daylight before it was too dark to go on. One day, two helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
s were scheduled to drop peanut shells that were to simulate locusts on film; however, Malick decided to shoot period cars instead. He kept the helicopters on hold at great cost. Production was lagging behind, with costs exceeding the budget by about $800,000, and Schneider had already mortgaged his home in order to cover the overages.
The production ran so late that both Almendros and camera operator John Bailey
John Bailey (cinematographer)
John Bailey, A.S.C. is an American Cinematographer and Film Director.Born in Moberly, Missouri, Bailey attended Santa Clara University and Loyola University Chicago. During his junior year he studied German language and culture at the University of Vienna, where he developed an appreciation for...
had to leave due to a prior commitment on François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
's The Man Who Loved Women
The Man Who Loved Women (1977 film)
The Man Who Loved Women is a 1977 French comedy/drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey and Nelly Borgeaud. In 1983, it was remade in Hollywood under the same title. The film had a total of 955,262 admissions in France. -Plot:Montpellier: December 1976...
. Almendros approached his friend and renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...
to complete the film. They worked together for a week so that Wexler could get familiar with the film's visual style. Wexler was careful to match Almendros' work, but he did make some exceptions. "I did some hand held shots on a Panaflex", he said, "[for] the opening of the film in the steel mill. I used some diffusion. Nestor didn't use any diffusion. I felt very guilty using the diffusion and having (sic) the feeling of violating a fellow cameraman." Though half the finished picture was footage shot by Wexler, he received only credit for "additional photography", much to his chagrin. The credit denied him any chance of an Academy Award for his work on Days of Heaven. He sent critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
a letter "in which he described sitting in a theater with a stopwatch to prove that more than half of the footage" was his.
Post-production
After the production finished principal photography, the editing process took over two years to complete. Malick had a difficult time shaping the film and getting the pieces to go together. Schneider reportedly showed some footage to director Richard Brooks, who was considering Gere for a role in Looking for Mr. GoodbarLooking for Mr. Goodbar (film)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a 1977 film written for the screen and directed by Richard Brooks and starring Diane Keaton, Tuesday Weld, Richard Gere, and also features Tom Berenger...
. According to Schneider, the editing for Days of Heaven took so long that "Brooks cast Gere, shot, edited and released [Looking for Mr. Goodbar] while Malick was still editing". A breakthrough came when Malick experimented with voice-overs from Linda Manz's character, similar to what he had done with Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek is an American actress and singer. She came to international prominence for her for role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination...
in Badlands
Badlands (film)
Badlands is a 1973 American crime drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Warren Oates and Ramon Bieri are also featured. Malick has a small speaking part although he does not receive an acting credit...
. According to editor Billy Weber
Billy Weber
Billy Weber is an American film editor with more than twenty film credits dating from Days of Heaven .One of Weber's first editing roles was as associate editor on Terrence Malick's first feature as a director, Badlands . Badlands was edited by Robert Estrin; Weber edited Malick's next film Days...
, Malick jettisoned much of the film's dialogue, replacing it with Manz's voice-over, which served as an oblique commentary on the story.
After a year, Malick had to call the actors to Los Angeles to shoot inserts of shots that were necessary but had not been filmed in Alberta. The finished film thus includes close-up
Close-up
In filmmaking, television production, still photography and the comic strip medium a close-up tightly frames a person or an object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots . Close-ups display the most detail, but they do not include the broader scene...
s of Shephard that were shot under a freeway overpass. The underwater shot of Gere's falling face down into the river was shot in a large aquarium in Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek is an American actress and singer. She came to international prominence for her for role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination...
's living room.
Meanwhile, Schneider was upset with Malick. He had confronted Malick numerous times about missed deadlines and broken promises. Due to further cost overruns, he had to ask Paramount for more money, which he preferred not to do. When they screened a demo for Paramount and made their pitch, the studio was impressed and reportedly "gave Malick a very sweet deal at the studio, carte blanche, essentially".
Malick was not able to capitalize on the deal. He was so exhausted from working on the film that he moved to Paris with his girlfriend. He tried developing another project for Paramount, but after a substantial amount of work, he abandoned it. He did not make another film until 1998's The Thin Red Line
The Thin Red Line (1998 film)
The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American war film which tells a fictional story of United States forces during the Battle of Mount Austen in World War II. It portrays men in: C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division; in particular those soldiers played by Sean Penn, Jim...
twenty years later.
Reaction
In his review for The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Harold C. Schonberg wrote, "Days of Heaven never really makes up its mind what it wants to be. It ends up something between a Texas pastoral and Cavalleria Rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
. Back of what basically is a conventional plot is all kinds of fancy, self-conscious cineaste techniques." Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr is an American film critic. A critic at the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune for many years, he writes a weekly column for The New York Times on DVD releases, in addition to contributing occasional pieces on individual films or filmmakers.-Early life and education:Dave Kehr did...
of The Chicago Reader
The Chicago Reader
The Chicago Reader is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded in 1971 by a group of friends from Carleton College...
wrote: "Terrence Malick's remarkably rich second feature is a story of human lives touched and passed over by the divine, told in a rush of stunning and precise imagery. Nestor Almendros
Néstor Almendros
Néstor Almendros, ASC was an Oscar winning Spanish cinematographer. One of the highest appraised contemporary cinematographers, "Almendros was an artist of deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light...he will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute...
's cinematography is as sharp and vivid as Malick's narration is elliptical and enigmatic. The result is a film that hovers just beyond our grasp—mysterious, beautiful, and, very possibly, a masterpiece". Gene Siskel
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death....
of The Chicago Tribune also wrote that the film "truly tests a film critic's power of description ... Some critics have complained that the Days of Heaven story is too slight. I suppose it is, but, frankly, you don't think about it while the movie is playing". Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's Frank Rich
Frank Rich
Frank Rich is an American essayist and op-ed columnist who wrote for The New York Times from 1980, when he was appointed its chief theatre critic, until 2011...
wrote, "Days of Heaven is lush with brilliant images". The periodical went on to name it one of the best films of 1978.
Nick Schager of Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
has called it "the greatest film ever made." Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
described the movie as "one of the most beautiful films ever made" and added it on his list of Great Movies.
Days of Heaven held a 93% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
with an average rating of 8.2/10 based on 45 reviews.
Awards
The film won an Academy Award for Best CinematographyAcademy Award for Best Cinematography
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
. Per Academy custom the award was given in the name of principal photographer Nestor Almendros
Néstor Almendros
Néstor Almendros, ASC was an Oscar winning Spanish cinematographer. One of the highest appraised contemporary cinematographers, "Almendros was an artist of deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light...he will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute...
. This was somewhat controversial as renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...
also received credit on the film. The film was also nominated for Academy Awards for Costume Design
Academy Award for Costume Design
The Academy Award for Best Costume Design is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for achievement in film costume design....
, Original Score
Academy Award for Original Music Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
, and Sound (John Wilkinson
John Wilkinson (sound engineer)
John Wilkinson was an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound and was nominated for another two in the same category...
, Robert W. Glass, Jr.
Robert W. Glass, Jr.
Robert W. Glass, Jr. is an American sound engineer. He was nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Best Sound.-External links:...
, John T. Reitz
John T. Reitz
John T. Reitz is an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound and was nominated for another three in the same category. He has worked on over 180 films since 1976.-Selected filmography:...
and Barry Thomas
Barry Thomas (sound engineer)
Barry Thomas is an American sound engineer. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Sound for the film Days of Heaven.-External links:...
). Malick won the Prix de la mise en scène
Mise en scène
Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...
(Best Director award) at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival
1979 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Françoise Sagan *Sergio Amidei *Rodolphe-Maurice Arlaud *Luis García Berlanga *Maurice Bessy *Paul Claudon *Jules Dassin *Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács...
. Furthermore, he was named the best director by the National Society of Film Critics
National Society of Film Critics
The National Society of Film Critics is an American film critic organization. As of December 2007 the NSFC had approximately 60 members who wrote for a variety of weekly and daily newspapers.-History:...
.
In 2007, Days of Heaven was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Further reading
- Charlotte Crofts (2001), 'From the "Hegemony of the Eye" to the "Hierarchy of Perception": The Reconfiguration of Sound and Image in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, Journal of Media Practice, 2:1, 19-29.
- Terry Curtis Fox (1978), 'The Last Ray of Light', Film Comment, 14:5, Sept/Oct, 27-28.
- Martin Donougho (1985), 'West of Eden: Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, Postscript: Essays in Film and the Humanities, 5:1, Fall, 17-30.
- Terrence Malick (1976), Days of Heaven, Script registered with the Writers Guild of America, 14 Apr; revised 2 Jun.
- Brooks Riley (1978), 'Interview with Nestor Almendros', Film Comment, 14:5, Sept/Oct, 28-31.
- Janet Wondra (1994), 'A Gaze Unbecoming: Schooling the Child for Femininity in Days of Heaven, Wide Angle, 16:4, Oct, 5-22.