Heaven's Gate
A Harvard-educated marshal tries to protect immigrant settlers in Wyoming as a cattle barons' association wages war on them.
The film that nearly destroyed United Artists and ended the New Hollywood era. Cost $44M, grossed $3.5M. A four-hour catastrophe that was also, eventually, a masterpiece.
Cimino's perfectionism after The Deer Hunter ran completely wild. The film's failure gave studios the ammunition to take back control from directors.
The bomb, the Red Menace, and the space race turbocharged science fiction. Giant ants, alien invasions, and body-snatchers were all metaphors for communist infiltration or nuclear dread.
Unlike WWII films, Vietnam cinema was fractured and critical. The war appeared first in coded form (Apocalypse Now's development started in 1969), then explicitly in The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July.
The women's movement slowly opened cinema to female perspectives. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (1975), the rise of the 'strong female lead' in the 80s, and the gradual dismantling of the male gaze.
As the AIDS epidemic destroyed creative communities in New York and Los Angeles, it changed how cinema depicted death, the body, and queer life — from Philadelphia to Longtime Companion.