The Deer Hunter (1978)
Directed by Michael Cimino
Three steelworkers enlist in the army and are sent to Vietnam, one leaving behind a rushed marriage, the others a shared love. What they encounter during the war changes their lives forever.
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7 films that influenced The Deer Hunter
What critics say influenced The Deer Hunter
While the results are far from unprofessional--the cast is uniformly good, including a characteristically slapped-around Meryl Streep, and the two deer-hunting sequences mark director Michael Cimino as an able student of Disney's Bambi and Riefenstahl's The Blue Light--the male self-pity is so overwhelming that you'll probably stagger out of this mumbling something about Tolstoy (as many critics did when the film first came out in 1978) if you aren't as nauseated as I was.
The Deer Hunter was the first of a number of Hollywood films that eschewed the flag-waving patriotism seen in the 1968 John Wayne picture The Green Berets and instead depicted the conflict as a brutal and bloody failure.
Just when we think that Cimino has grasped the lessons of Visconti and The Leopard, he shows how shallow he really is.
Starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage and John Cazale, this is a modern version of the Second World War drama The Best Years of Our Lives, showing how men and America itself cope with the horrors of war and its aftermath.
Yet The Deer Hunter is less a realist war film than a vision of how small-town American life was twisted and warped by Vietnam – a high-octane sequel to The Best Years of Our Lives that follows three steelworkers, Michael (Robert De Niro), Nicky (Christopher Walken) and Steven (John Savage) as they move from their hometown of Clairton, Pennsylvania (in the first act) to Vietnam (in the second act) and back again to Clairton (in the third act).
It is a film about the trauma of war, more in the tradition of "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "Coming Home."
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Cimino's ascent started with writing some pretty well remembered 70s' movies – how about Silent Running and Magnum Force?
Writers Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker's original spec script (entitled "The Man Who Came to Play") may bare little resemblance to this sprawling 182 minute film, but when combined with Michael Cimino's story ideas (tall tales and exaggerations, though they may be) and the finishing touches of Silent Running scribe Deric Washburn (who wrote the final screenplay) the result is an amazing and deep Oscar Nominated script that goes far beyond cruel gun games and far beyond mere Vietnam War scenes.
The screenplay was then adapted by Deric Washburn, known for also co-writing the screenplays to the films “Silent Running” (1972), “The Border” (1982), and “Extreme Prejudice” (1987).
An identical thing happens in Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs.
Cimino's ascent started with writing some pretty well remembered 70s' movies – how about Silent Running and Magnum Force?