Days of Heaven (1978)

A hot-tempered farm laborer convinces the woman he loves to marry their rich but dying boss so that they can have a claim to his fortune.

Director:

Terrence Malick

Writer:

Terrence Malick

Stars:

Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard

Won 1 Oscar. Another 12 wins & 12 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Richard Gere	...	Bill
Brooke Adams	...	Abby
Sam Shepard	...	The Farmer
Linda Manz	...	Linda
Robert J. Wilke	...	The Farm Foreman (as Robert Wilke)
Jackie Shultis	...	Linda's Friend
Stuart Margolin	...	Mill Foreman
Timothy Scott	...	Harvest Hand (as Tim Scott)
Gene Bell	...	Dancer
Doug Kershaw	...	Fiddler
Richard Libertini	...	Vaudeville Leader
Frenchie Lemond	...	Vaudeville Wrestler
Sahbra Markus	...	Vaudeville Dancer
Bob Wilson	...	Accountant
Muriel Jolliffe	...	Headmistress

Storyline

Bill and Abby, a young couple who to the outside world pretend to be brother and sister are living and working in Chicago at the beginning of the century. They want to escape the poverty and hard labor of the city and travel south. Together with the girl Linda (who acts as the narrator in the movie) they find employment on a farm in the Texas panhandle. When the harvest is over the young, rich and handsome farmer invites them to stay because he has fallen in love with Abby. When Bill and Abby discover that the farmer is seriously ill and has only got a year left to live they decide that Abby will accept his wedding proposal in order to make some benefit out of the situation. When the expected death fails to come, jealousy and impatience are slowly setting in and accidents become eventually inevitable.

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Plot Keywords:

farm | wealth | farm worker | harvest | grasshopper | 

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Taglines:

You've got to go through Hell before you get to Heaven

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Italian

Release Date:

6 October 1978 (USA)

Also Known As:

Days of Heaven

Filming Locations:

Raymond, Alberta, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$3,000,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$3,446,749

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$3,475,702

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby (35 mm prints) 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints)

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film features a brief scene of dogs hunting the prairie. The German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP) shown is Jocko von Stolzhafen, twice GSP National Champion (Field) and perhaps the best GSP of his era. A year or so later Jocko vanished while running at a training camp, presumably stolen.

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Goofs

Any Fokker Dr.1 triplanes available just after WWI would have the original rotary engine, rather than a radial engine. The difference is that the rotary engine spins along with the propeller, and a radial engine doesn't. The Fokker in the 59th minute clearly has a radial engine.

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Quotes

Linda: Just as things were about to blow, this flying circus came in After six months on this sweet patch, I needed a breath of fresh air. They was screaming and yelling and bopping each other. He, the big one, pushed the little one and said come on, I started, you start. The little one just started in. If they couldn't think of a good one to come back with, they'd start fighting. The little one said, no, I didn't do this. The big one said, yes, you did do this. You couldn't sort it out. The devil's ...

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Connections

Referenced in At the Movies: You've Got Mail/Down in the Delta/The Thin Red Line/A Civil Action/Affliction (1998)

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Soundtracks

Carnival of the Animals - The Aquarium
by Camille Saint-Saëns
Performed by Wiener Philharmoniker (as the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra)
Used by permission of Polydor International GmbH Copyright 1975
Conducted by Karl Böhm (uncredited)

User Reviews

Full surprise within the American film universe.

This movie was a full and happy surprise for me. This man, Malick, stood twenty years out of business because he had to be, afterwards, after such a beautiful movie he couldn't and shouldn't return with any other thing shorter than this.

Days Of Heaven is absolutely perfect cinema, the plot is not important, Malick simply wants to fill your senses and he achieves it.

I haven't had the chance to watch it in a theatre, I was four years old at the time, I've watched it on television, and I understood immediately, this man is a hero for building up such a magnificent film in the United States, in Hollywood.

A true director builds a universe of his own, with its own "time flow" and dreams and that is what Malick achieved with this film, magic, sacral art. Some sequences are "almost" (a big almost) Tarkovskyand this is a big commendation.