Mao5 Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Director Michael Cimino is one of the great visionaries of the cinema, a chronicler of America at its best and worst, of its promise and its failures. After a successful career in advertising, Cimino turned to screenwriting and co-wrote the DIRTY HARRY sequel MAGNUM FORCE; that job led to a second collaboration with Clint Eastwood, THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT, which Cimino directed. A modern-day Western, that film exhibited the dynamic, detailed visual sense that Cimino, a former art and architecture student, would bring to all of his subsequent movies; it also combined an elegiac longing for a lost America with muscular action and rich characterizations. All of these traits would define Ciminos follow-up, the 1978 masterpiece THE DEER HUNTER, which won the director an Academy Award and enabled him to embark on his most ambitious production, HEAVENS GATE. That Western served as a summing up of all that had come before in the films of John Ford and other old masters while also taking the genre in new, startling directions; it also was prescient about the kinds of class debates that would define American political discourse from 1980 forward. Cimino continued to explore class, race and politics in later films such as YEAR OF THE DRAGON (a controversial gem featuring one of Mickey Rourkes greatest performances) and THE SICILIAN, and managed to bring a personal touch to his underrated 1990 remake of THE DESPERATE HOURS (again starring Rourke). Filmography 1974 : Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 1978 : The Deer Hunter 1980 : Heaven's Gate 1985 : Year of the Dragon 1987 : The Sicilian 1990 : Desperate Hours 1996 : The Sunchaser Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Cnut Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 Extremely underrated. And a lot of people who sing him up that ain't seen a lot more than The Deer Hunter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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