Heaven’s Gate. Michael Cimino, 1980.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #636, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 216 minutes.
Summary: cockfighting; horses in gun fights
Details:
1) A backyard butchering scene starts at 21:57 and highlights the chore of getting the mountain of discarded guts into the mountainous discarded gut cauldron. Other action with the hanging carcass in the background through 24:00.
2) A man is ready to shoot a calf in the head but is interrupted and nothing comes of this; just before the cockfighting scene below.
3) Cockfighting scene starts at 58:15 and is intercut with other action until the fight is interrupted at 1:04:07 by people squabbling. We see the white rooster injured and his owner reviving him to make him continue.
4) While unloading horses from a box car, a white horse slips and falls due to missing battens on the ramp, 2:07:09. This disregard for the animals’ safety is easily corrected both in the film and in the real world, and I am left wandering about the reality of this “accident”. The ramp is not a 19th-century artifact but part of the set built for the movie, suggesting that some battens were intentionally left off and the camera ready for the impending fall.
5) A rather spectacular battle scene unfortunately includes a horse rearing up as he is shot at 3:02:00. The battle scene concludes at 3:07:00 with a few milder implications of injured horses, the sort of depictions common in Western movies that are unclear whether the horse or the rider has been shot.