Film director

Born: February 3, 1939;

Found dead: July 2, 2016

MICHAEL Cimino, who has died aged 77, won Oscars for best film and best director for his second feature film The Deer Hunter in 1979 and was hailed as the brightest star in a golden generation that included Spielberg, Scorsese and Coppola.

He was given free rein on his third film Heaven’s Gate a year later – and he duly bankrupted a major film studio and threw the entire industry into chaos.

A critical and commercial disaster in the United States, Heaven’s Gate cost around $35million, five times the original budget and ten times as much as it grossed. It spelled the end for United Artists as an independent studio and turned Cimino into a Hollywood pariah.

However Kris Kristofferson, one of the film’s stars, consistently argued that the main reason for the film’s failure in the US was its left-wing politics. And many critics and fans abroad, especially in France, considered the film a masterpiece.

With its epic scope, powerful performances and sense of tragedy, it is not difficult to construct an argument that Heaven’s Gate is one of the greatest films ever made.

Certainly that was Cimino’s view. But then he also suggested that as a child he had been as talented an artist as Michelangelo. And later, after turning to novels, he compared himself to Tolstoy. Many considered him arrogant and vain.

He became a virtual recluse and when he did appear in public he was virtually unrecognisable due to extensive plastic surgery. He appeared to be getting younger and also to be turning into a woman.

Asked about his appearance and rumours of a possible sex change, he said: “If you look at Buddhists, sometimes they appear like they are getting younger ... They’re just evolving as better human beings.”

He was born in New York, where his father was involved in music publishing. The year was almost certainly 1939, though he told one interviewer he was born in 1952. He claimed he studied art at Yale, but there is a lot of conflicting information in profiles and interviews.

He made television commercials, moved to Hollywood and co-wrote Silent Running (1972), on offbeat sci-fi film with Bruce Dern, and the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force (1973) starring Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood agreed to be both producer and star on Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), a buddy movie that Cimino had written and which would be his first film as director. Its success paved the way for The Deer Hunter, the story of three Pennsylvania steel-workers who go off to fight in the Vietnam War.

Cimino said it was “very personal”. He revealed that he had been “attached” to a Green Berets unit, implying that this was in Vietnam, when in fact he was a reservist in New Jersey.

He had gone over schedule and over budget and there were accusations of racism and historical inaccuracies – he admitted the famous Russian roulette scene was pure invention. But none of this mattered when the film became a big hit and hopes were high for Heaven’s Gate.

A historical epic, it pitted capitalist cattle barons against impoverished East European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s. Kristofferson plays the local law officer, though he is independently wealthy. Walken is his erstwhile friend, who has been working for the cattlemen.

The film lasted three and three-quarter hours. It got terrible reviews and United Artists cut it to two and half, re-released it and it flopped again.

But in December 1982 the original version was screened in France and was a sensation, with people almost rioting to see it. One British critic called it “magnificent” and another a “masterpiece”. But by then it was too late.

Heaven’s Gate spelled the end of westerns as a cinema staple. It marked the end of the new age of Hollywood auteurs, where talented, but relatively inexperienced directors were allowed to overrule producers.

Cimino worked on various projects that stalled or passed to other film-makers, including Footloose (1984). He eventually teamed up with producer Dino De Laurentiis on Year of the Dragon (1985), a thriller starring Mickey Rourke. It did solid, but unspectacular business.

The Sicilian (1987), an adaptation of a Mario Puzo novel, was another flop. Cimino made only two films during the 1990s, Desperate Hours (1990) and The Sunchaser (1996).

In a rare interview, with Vanity Fair, in 2010, he talked about his move towards novel writing and his seemingly bizarre lifestyle. He claimed he had a daughter who was a champion show-jumper and played guitar like Keith Richards.

But then he also said: “When I’m kidding, I’m serious. And when I’m serious, I’m kidding. I am not who I am. And I am who I am not … Some people think that I’m totally nuts.”

He was found dead in his Los Angeles home after friends became concerned when they could not reach him by telephone. His lawyer said he had no immediate family.

BRIAN PENDREIGH