Festival de Cannes 72 Countdown: Days of Heaven, 1979

We excitedly countdown to the 72nd Festival de Cannes with a different prize winning film each day.

Days of Heaven, 1979

Prix de la mise en scène – Terrence Malick

It’s still hard to comprehend that Days of Heaven was Terrence Malick second feature film. It’s damn near perfect, which is remarkable considering the problematic shoot. According to cinematographer Néstor Almendros, the production was not “rigidly prepared”. This allowed for improvisation. Daily call sheets were not very detailed and the schedule would changed to suit the weather. This upset some crew members who were not used to working this way. The feeling among the crew was that Malick and Almendros didn’t know what they were doing. However, many great things have occurred as the result of accidents and Days of Heaven is one of them.

It took Malick nearly two years to edit the film, as he had deviated from the original screenplay. To overcome this issue, an improvised narration by Linda Manz was added. Manz’s narration isn’t used in the traditional sense (i.e. to move the narrative along), but rather in the sense that it holds the film together. The narrative gives the impression that Manz’s character is speaking many years after the events of the film, and it’s her reflection on the time. There’s a vague, dream-like quality to her narration as she tries to piece together her account of what occured.

Days of Heaven takes place during the years before World War I. Outside Chicago, Bill (Richard Gere) gets in a fight with a steel mill foreman and kills him. We are never given an explanation as to what their argument was about, but none of that really matters. Bill must leave. His lover Abby (Brooke Adams) and his little sister Linda (Linda Manz) join him. The three of them make their to Texas, where the harvest is in progress. They’re lucky enough to get jobs as laborers on the vast wheat field of a farmer (Sam Shepard). Bill tells everyone Abby is his sister, and even gets in a fight with a field hand when he suggests otherwise.

Abby attracts the attention of the farmer (who is never named), and he asks her stay after the harvest is over. Bill has overheard a conversation between the farmer and a doctor, and learns that the farmer has perhaps a year to live. When he realises that the farmer has fallen for Abby, he suggests that she marries the farmer, as once he has passed away they will at last have money enough to live happily. However, the farmer doesn’t get any sicker.

Problems begin to arise when the farmer sees Bill and Abby in tender moments together. Suspecting something is amiss, he challenges Bill. Bill leaves, hitching a ride with an aerial circus that has descended out of the sky. Abby, the farmer and Linda live happily for a year, and then Bill returns at harvest time. During the time that Bill has been away, Abby has fallen in love with the farmer. The issues felt between the three adults all begin to rear their ugly heads, and to make matters worse, a series of misfortunes on a biblical scale begin (which include a literal plague of grasshoppers).

Roger Ebert famously declared that ‘”Days of Heaven” is above all one of the most beautiful films ever made’. Ebert is right of course. You can take any shot from Days of Heaven and hang it up in an art gallery. Malick was obsessed with shooting at the ‘golden hour’ (also known as the magic hour), which is just before dawn and just before dusk. This time of day can offer some of the best natural light results when done right, and on Days of Heaven it was done right.

When you realise that cinematographer Almendros was gradually losing his sight by the time shooting began, it makes the cinematography even more remarkable. The film has the very distinct look, a romantic reflection on a time that many have forgotten. Even interior shots were filmed using natural light sources. Often we never really see the actors’ faces in scenes set at night or at sunset, so we have to envision their emotional responses.

When Almendros was called away to shoot François Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women (1977), he asked fellow cinematographer Haskell Wexler to take over. Wexler knew Almendros’ style and matched it perfectly, although he did incorporate some of his own style with the use of hand-held camera at the very start of the film. Ennio Morricone’s score is the perfect accompaniment, and helps to transcend the film to a whole new level of excellence.  

Yes, the film may lack a narrative, and you may struggle to understand the ‘point’ of its message, but some of the greatest films ever made are the ones that leave it to the viewer to interpret and find their own sense of meaning. Linda states in her narration that, “Nobody’s perfect. There was never a perfect person around. You just have half-angel and half-devil in you.” Indeed, nobody is perfect but films can be. Days of Heaven is the closest we can ever get to the concept of perfection.