Remembering Michael Cimino and The Deer Hunter

Easy Rider. Five Easy Pieces. The Last Picture Show. The Godfather. Badlands. Mean Streets. Serpico. The Parallax View. These are just some of the most iconic and seminal works of the era of what is known as New American Cinema, a period roughly spanning the late 1960s through to 1980 when ambitious, auteur-driven cinema found a thrilling niche within the Hollywood firmament.

Perhaps the filmmaker that best embodies the spirit of this movement is Michael Cimino, who passed away on Saturday at the age of 77. Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) has entered popular folklore as the so-called “grand folly” that brought the curtain down on this era, but it is Cimino’s earlier, intense Oscar winner, The Deer Hunter (1978), that exemplifies the high-minded merits of New American Cinema at its best.

(To read the full article, please follow this link:  https://oneroomwithaview.com/2016/07/05/remembering-michael-cimino-and-the-deer-hunter/ ) (July 2016)