Michael Cimino is one of the key authors of the American cinema of the second half of the 20th century and not merely thanks to the fact that many critics and film lovers consider his film The Deer Hunter (1978) one of the best American films of all time

Son of Italian immigrants, Cimino studied architecture and drama arts in New York, and then graduated from the prestigious Yale University. He began working on film as a director of very attractive commercials that stood out thanks to their accentuated visual expressiveness and refinement of even the smallest details. Even though Hollywood has changed dramatically between the 1960’s and 1970’s, at the time the transition from that form to feature film production was still much harder than today. Cimino tried to establish himself as a writer of screenplays. Realizing that a big film star would ensure him certain credibility, he offered his screenplay for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot to Clint Eastwood, who accepted him as a director for that successful crime drama starring Eastwood as well as Jeff Bridges. Cimino worked with Eastwood again as a co-screenwriter for the film Magnum Force (1973) directed by John Milius.

Proving himself by working on these commercially successful films, Cimino used the readiness of big production companies to produce films by new and interesting authors, and managed to secure funds to direct his first feature film. It was the ambitious The Deer Hunter (1978), the first film that showed how the Vietnam War, lost in 1975, affected the psyche of American people. This is the most common determinant when mentioning his most successful film as it was especially provocative at the time of its filming, which was just a few years after the end of the war, which divided the supporters and opponents of this infamous US intervention that cost not only a lot of money but also took numerous human lives. However, besides being interested in this defining event that influenced the entire nation, Cimino wanted to examine a series of layered meanings, especially how the pressure of outer forces affects true friendship and human integrity of individuals. In a very specific and visually impressive manner, he managed to bring together the epic proportions of war and its echoes in the US with personal dramas of individuals. He had the help of some great actors who were just starting out on their pathway to stardom - Robert De Niro, John Savage, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep and her partner at the time John Cazale. Cimino knew that Cazale’s days were numbered due to bone cancer and for that reason he filmed his scenes the first. All of them played some of their best roles in this film. At the same time these roles represented a certain shift from their previous ones as Cimino (even though he did not have much experience in working with actors before this) had a great instinct for finding the actors’ hidden possibilities. Besides winning many Oscars, it was a great success in theatres as well as with the critics. On the other hand it received much criticism for its racist treatment of Vietcong fighters and right-wing American nationalism. At the same time it was forgotten that the first third of the film, that shows a fascinating wedding in an orthodox church and a deer hunt, which are full of symbolic meanings, takes place among poor steelworkers of Russian origin who are trying to fit into America. However, it turned out that their attempt to fit in had a high price and revealed that the American dream is not as splendid as it may have seemed. The song in the end of the film can be interpreted not merely as an ode to joy but even more as an ironic sobering.

Nevertheless, The Deer Hunter remains one of the peaks of the big producers’ investments into author projects and after directing it Cimino had no trouble getting funding for his next film Heaven's Gate (1980). In this specific western, he used a similar strategy to combine individual dramas with the wider picture of the American society. It is story set in the 19th century about rich ranchers who are trying to preserve their land as pastures by using violence as a means of repelling the poor farmers who moved there from Europe. Finally, it ends in a bloody show-down. His budget of 11.5 mil dollars was enormous for that time but because he was obsessed with his own perfectionism and vision, he ended up spending four times more money than planned and unnecessarily using kilometers of film tape. In the end, he succeeded to edit a film that was originally five hours long but which had to be shortened to three and a half hours for regular distribution in theatres. However, since the audience and the critics were rather disappointed after the first screenings, the producers shortened it for another seventy minutes and in the end there were very few scenes left that showed Cimino’s outstanding talent. The film seemed quite incoherent because the story did not function without the deleted scenes. In the end Heaven's Gate became one of the biggest commercial failures that caused bankruptcy of the United Artists production house. American film critics did not value it much, while European critics reviewed it much more favorably and mentioned it as a rare example of a successful American author film. Nevertheless, this did not change the impression of American filmmakers and critics about Cimino as a director who managed to confirm the reasoning for investments in author projects after he directed The Deer Hunter, only to completely close the door to such practice two years later.

Even though Heaven's Gate enjoys a cult status today, the fact that it was a failure significantly influenced Cimino’s future career and reception of his films, because failure (especially financial) cannot be forgiven and is not forgotten in the US. Therefore, his very good and in Europe acclaimed crime drama Year of the Dragon (1985) was not very successful at the box offices and American critics did not like it much. They criticized Cimino for being too right-wing and racist (due to his treatment of criminals of Chinese origin), which is a complete nonsense when one knows that the co-screenwriter was Oliver Stone famous for his leftist worldviews and social criticism. The reasoning for such criticism was the fact that the protagonist who has to deal with the Chinese mafia is the most awarded policeman from New York as well as a Veteran of Vietnam (Mickey Rourke’s best role). At the same time they failed to notice that he is of Polish origin, which represents another variation of Cimino’s typical theme about the problems of immigrants who want to fit in the American society. Besides, his bravery and willingness to enter risky situations stem from his resignation and some sort of an attempt to redeem himself for what he experienced and did in Vietnam. His later films received similar treatment, and even though his last film The Sunchaser (1996) was shown in the official program in Cannes, in the US it was published only on video. His novel Big Jane (2001) was ignored in the US, but received good reviews in France. Somewhat more noticed and liked was the director’s cut of his film Heaven's Gate which he finished in 2012. It could be said that even though he was not an immigrant himself (his parents were), he had an even harder life than the immigrants he portrayed in his films. (Tomislav Kurelec)