King’s temporary Hollywood after his harvest of oscars for the triumphant Journey to the end of hell in 1979, young Michael Cimino felt to grow wings for his next film : The Door of paradise. It will fly, alas, too close to the sun his ambitions and will see his career charred by the disaster, critical and public of this western budget, quadrupling its initial financial envelope of $ 12 million. Inspired by an episode of real property in american History, the war of the county of Johnson in Wyoming (events that occurred between 1889 and 1893), The Gate of paradise is back on the pogroms, which were victims of the immigrants from central Europe on the part of landowners supported by the government. Nanti full powers by the studio United Artists, Cimino decides to base its drama around a trio of lovers : the marshal James Averill (Kris Kristofferson), the mercenary Nate Champion (Christopher Walken) and the prostitute Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert).
Three characters soon swept away by a hurricane of violence, when the union of the breeders of Wyoming decides to draw up a black list of immigrants, unwanted and slaughter in cold blood by a private militia. Dazzling and heart-wrenching, visually sumptuous, the fresco of Michael Cimino’s going to completely unseat the critics of the time by its length (3: 40), his freedom narrative, his asides sentimental and appalling blackness final, considered by some as a defilement unbearable the myth of the american West. Machine-gunned by the local press, the film is massively fled through the crowds to its release in the United States, in November 1980. Removed screens at the end of a week, at the request of Cimino, who will propose a new timeline reduced by almost an hour, The Door of paradise shall come up no more in the saddle, to land for good, and mocked as one of the worst flops in the history of cinema. The king Cimino is naked, he never recovered really from this journey to the end of hell. Neither the studio United Artists, including the spectacular failure of the film will cause a bankruptcy of no return. For the 10th and final episode of its first season, Movie-Crash is back, in the company of his chroniclers Yann Valentin and François-Xavier Taboni, on the genesis, the production and the terrible fate of this great western epic and political, has been acclaimed in Europe, but never really rehabilitated in their country of origin.
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Movie-Crash landing #7 – “My best friends” : a ufo in the CV of Jean-Marie Poiré Movie-Crash landing #8 – And “Playtime” rang the end of recess for Jacques Tati Movie-Crash landing #9 – Cleopatra : when the peplum turns into a fiasco
