All language subtitles for CLASSIC MOVIES STORY OF - 6 - Documentary (2024) –

Oh, Christ, I don't believe it.

Mike?
Mike!

Jesus Christ! Hey!

Incoming!

Starring Robert De Niro
and Christopher Walken,

and directed by Michael Cimino,

The Deer Hunter can lay claim
to have invented a genre.

I mean, I think in some ways,
looking back now,

I think it's almost as remarkable

that this film got made
so soon after the war ended.

Because, try to imagine,

this was a defeat
at arms of America.

It wasn't that America, somehow,

attritionally had to pull
out a few troops,

this was defeat.

Helicopters lifting
off the American Embassy,

people scrambling for safety.

So the sense of national humiliation
was very high.

I think it would've been untouchable
before, during the war itself.

I think the filmmakers
would have been eviscerated

for lack of patriotism.

Told from the perspective
of ordinary men,

here was a radical new way
of depicting war on screen.

A film about the damage done
to the bodies,

minds, and souls of those who fought.

The political was wrapped
up in the personal.

The Vietnam movie was born.

Released in 1978,
The Deer Hunter became a sensation.

A huge box office hit
that swept America off its feet,

winning five Oscars.

But the film was more than simply
a commercial and artistic success.

Before The Deer Hunter, what was
Hollywood's attitude toward Vietnam?

Did such a thing
as the Vietnam film even exist?

I think it took Hollywood
a few years for the dust to settle,

for the evacuation of Saigon in '75,

to really start making films
seriously about the war.

And in fact, there was only
one feature film made in Hollywood

about the war during the war,
and that was in 1968,

and it was John Wayne's film
The Green Berets.

An extremely militaristic,
pro-US-intervention film,

and not really attached
to any of the actual realities

of what we'd expect
from the Vietnam war film today,

which we might think about
with The Deer Hunter.

There were
a few documentaries being made

that were more on the anti-war side,

things like Hearts and Minds
in 1974,

which won Best Documentary
at the Oscars.

But it was more of a thing
that was not explicitly mentioned.

'Before the parade,
mass draft-card burning was urged.

Demonstrators claimed
200 cards were burned,

but no accurate count
could be determined.

Reporters and onlookers
were jostled away on purpose.

Although mostly peaceful,
shouted confrontations were frequent

and fiery during the course
of the march.

The anti-war marchers were picketed
by anti-anti-war marchers,

who were hawkish
toward the parading doves.'

Before The Deer Hunter came along,

Hollywood was very nervous about
making films about the Vietnam War.

It'd been going on for 20 years,
and in that time of course,

it was very, very contentious
with the American public.

John Wayne decided
that he wanted to make a film

which was pretty well
a sort of propaganda movie,

to boost the morale of the troops.

And also to give the folks back home

an idea of what was happening
over there.

Of course,
this was very, very designed

to bring everybody up
as opposed to keeping them down.

There was one other film, actually,
made in 1972 called Limbo,

which was about the wives who were
left behind, the military wives,

waiting for their men, whether
they were going to come back or not.

That didn't do very well either,

but those are
the only two extant movies

from the period when the Vietnam War
was actually happening.

We are, in Christian Action,
convinced that the war in Vietnam

is an offence
to all people of goodwill.

That it should and must be brought
to an end at once.

And that the British government...

..should be persuaded to do
everything it possibly can...

..to get the dispute
out of the hands of the military,

and into the conference room.

There were a couple of films
which were allegories, I guess.

If you think
the Rob Altman's M*A*S*H

was ostensibly about the Korean War,

but it was very clearly technically
about the Vietnam War.

But really,
Hollywood didn't want to go into it.

It felt that it was divisive,
it was unpopular,

and that making a film
about it would really...

No-one in America wanted
to break away from the TV,

which was showing
the war every night,

and go to the cinema
to watch the war again.

So they really...
It was very, very hands off.

America was not keen on remembering
or reliving the war.

The veterans,
when they came home from Vietnam,

found very little appetite
to welcome them.

There were no heroes welcomes,
it was really brushed aside.

It was almost as if everyone
was embarrassed by the fact

that the war had taken place.
Terrible for the veterans,

but also something that Hollywood
didn't want to set out to write.

Well...

we didn't have the brass bands,

and we didn't have crowds
meeting us at the airport.

We kind of snuck in the back door.

Uh... I came back...

even more so,
cos I didn't even come...

I came back in a hospital plane.

Even by the mid-'70s,
Hollywood stood firm

that audiences did not want to see
Vietnam on the big screen.

The Deer Hunter led
a cinematic revolution.

Films that went in search of reality.

JOHN WILLIAMS: Cavatina
(Theme From "The Deer Hunter")

(TYRES SCREECH)
MAN: Hey, wait!

Think of the context.

I mean, the war was
unbelievably divisive in the States.

There were mass demonstrations
in London.

People were being arrested
for complaining about the war.

Fifty thousand servicemen died.

People were running away to Canada,

large numbers of young men
were crossing the border to Canada

and becoming refugees, effectively,
from their own country.

So the social divisions provoked
by the war at large,

but particularly
among liberal Americans, were huge.

And Hollywood,
being a liberal place,

was right at the crux
of that kind of anguish.Mm.

That it would be unpatriotic
to protest publicly,

but it was a source of disgust
and shame.

So there was terrible
conflicted feelings, I think,

within the entire creative community
within the media at large,

and, of course,
within the wider public,

where this had been
the first televised war.

Cimino would often recall
a preview screening held in Chicago.

During the showing
of the three-hour film,

men and women would rush
into the lobby,

not because they disliked
what they were watching,

but to stem the flow of tears.

The Deer Hunter unlocked America.

It allowed audiences to finally
confront the reality of Vietnam.

STEVE: I hit some rocks, Michael.

I hit some rocks.
I'm alright, Michael.

MIKE: OK.

The original script
had told the story

of a psychologically damaged veteran,

who heads to Las Vegas
to play Russian roulette.

But when producer Michael Deeley

brought in writer/director
Michael Cimino,

the script began to evolve.

Inspired by the combat footage
on American television news,

Cimino inverted the idea

into a story
of young men going to war.

Three contrasting friends

from a tight-knit
Pennsylvania steel town,

who would leave for Vietnam
after a local wedding.

The air is filled with troopers...
They sound like shit.

Join the stick of angels
Kill the lengthy Amazon...

It's the Screaming Eagles
Airborne song.

It's a gory road to glory
but we're ready, here we go!

Shout Geronimo...
Screaming assholes.

Look out below, look out below

Let me be free
La da-da-da...

I can't remember
the rest of the words.

You'll always be happy with me

Chickenshit, get scared.

It didn't take on the subject
directly, did it?

Michael Deeley had a different script
he was working on,

which was sort of
about someone returning from Vietnam?

Yeah, it was about a returning
Vietnam vet who goes to Vegas

and starts to become a gambler.

But all based around playing
Russian roulette, which is,

of course, a key thematic thing
in The Deer Hunter,

and which we know would later,
you know, retool it in that way.

But this was supposed
to be something

which was quite light in tone.

It was compared to
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

at one point
when it was being shopped around.

So it was completely different
to what we get with The Deer Hunter,

which is focused
on people going off to Vietnam,

and young men whose hopes and lives
are shattered by that experience.

Cimino insisted he was making
a non-political movie.

This wasn't even
about the Vietnam War.

Brilliantly structured
in three movements

from wedding to funeral,

this was a movie about people.

Particularly,
what happens when the horror

affects the lives
of a group of friends.

These people are waiting hopefully,

but I imagine vainly,

for a helicopter to land here
on the roof of the American Embassy

in the middle of Saigon,
and take them to safety.

But they have no papers,
they have just come here.

Because the whole embassy is wide
open, they've come up the stairs.

They're in fact on the chopper pad,

no helicopter would probably land
under these circumstances.

And so they wait here vainly,

possibly a helicopter will come
back, but it looks most unlikely,

because about ten past eight
this morning,

what looked like
a final Marine helicopter

touched down here briefly,
took aboard a handful of Marines,

and then lifted off.

And that looked like the end
of the American evacuation.

The background to the film
is quite interesting.

Michael Deeley, the producer,
had wanted to make a film

that was very much
about a veteran of the war.Yep.

He had come back
and he had sort of landed in Vegas

where the Russian roulette
comes into it,

become obsessed
with Russian roulette.

So it was very different,

it wasn't quite a Vietnam War film
to begin with.

No. I mean, the history
of the genesis of this film

is partly tied up
with these two Englishmen.

Michael Deeley in particular,
who'd been part of the Woodfall,

he'd been part
of New British Cinema.

He'd done The Italian Job.

And then he, basically,
British Lion, his company,

became EMI films.

And they made, I think,
three films only,

two of which were deeply troubled.

And one of them was The Deer Hunter,

the other was Convoy
with Sam Peckinpah,

an equally troubled film.

And I think the genesis
of the script,

with I think originally Roy Scheider
possibly attached

to play in that version of the film.

The fact that Cimino
then pitched in for it

on the strength of his work
with Clint Eastwood,

who had kind of
slightly mentored him.

That was a very interesting genesis.

And of course,
the idea of the Russian roulette

and its transposition to Vietnam,
in a sense,

is the heart,
dramatically, of the film.

De Niro's Mike, Walken's Nick
and John Savage's Steve

are eager to head off to Vietnam,

to break the monotony
of their steel-mill night shifts.

They all leave
behind small-town loves and lives,

including Meryl Streep as the girl
both Mike and Nick adore.

Vietnam will prove
a living nightmare.

Imprisoned by the Viet Cong,

their captors will gamble
on who might live or die.

Cimino is a demanding
and often temperamental artist.

Having made his debut directing
Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges

in the surprisingly dark caper movie
Thunderbolt And Lightfoot...

..his intensity and dedication would
nevertheless elevate the material.

He took buses and trains
through the Northeastern states

to find his perfect community,

writing the script as he was
in search of American authenticity.

This is set in a community which
is Russian Orthodox Christianity.

So the wedding itself

is a wonderful
sort of elaborate celebration,

with all the kind of rituals
and adornments

that you would get
from that kind of community.

It contrasts very much,
actually, with, of course,

the actual outside
and their working conditions,

and even their living conditions,
which are relatively poor,

they're quite impoverished.

All this is set up because you want
to be able to see the relationships

and how they actually exist
and survive in this environment.

And it brings them all
closely together.

They're a very close-knit community.

And so, by the time you've got
even to the wedding ceremony,

which is, of course,
a wonderfully glorious...

Full of dancing, full of music as
well as the actual ceremony itself,

which is very ritualistic,

you've got to understand each
of those characters individually,

not just as a group,
but individually,

and that means
you actually care about them.

Backed by the record label EMI,

making a short-lived foray into film,

and stirred by the vitality
of '70s Hollywood,

The Deer Hunter was
an independent production.

Producer Michael Deeley maintained

that they would never have achieved
the financing without De Niro.

Michael Cimino wasn't interested

in a political film
about the Vietnam War.

He didn't want to make
any statement about it.

He, when he was developing the film,

almost saw the Vietnam War
as something

that happened
to these three friends.

He was interested in what happens
to three people in a community

when a catastrophe hits.
He was on the record really,

saying this is about
what happened to these three men,

not about the grand sweep of war,

and the historical injustices
or so on.

He didn't want people to see it
as a political film most of all.

So he is not commenting on the war,

he's using the war
to tell the story.

Now at the time, the war had
only been over for three years,

the war ended in 1975,
they shot The Deer Hunter in 1978.

Perhaps that was important

not to be making a statement
about the film for him,

because it was clearly an incredibly
divisive subject still in America.

It was something
that he was exploring, you know,

in a way, at great risk to the film,

to the likelihood of the film
attracting an audience,

because there would be
a lot of people who,

if they thought this was
either leaning one way or the other,

would probably not want to go.

So he was very keen to say the war
is the event of the film,

it's not about the war.

He said later on
that he was influenced

by the Visconti movie The Leopard,

and the long,
long sequence in the ballroom.

And although
that's about aristocracy,

and this is about the working class,
there is something about this idea

of this kind of elegiac,
end-of-an-era feeling to it.

The sense that, you know,

three days before they're gonna
get shipped out to Vietnam

and things are, you know...

Things are never going to be
the same again after this.

So you carry that melancholy
with you when you watch it.

But equally, just in terms
of the set up of it, it's something.

Because so many
of the extras came in,

something like 250 extras
were from the community

and were
from a Russian Orthodox background,

most of them didn't even have
to learn the traditional dances.

He wants to do
an almost fly-on-the-wall thing.

It does feel very influenced
by cinema verite,

by things like the Maysles brothers,

and even filmmakers
like Milos Forman as well,

who... had such a great eye

for capturing the textures
of everyday working-class life.

And yeah, you can just watch
the small little petty incidents,

the little dramas, the little kind
of jealousies, these moments of joy,

happiness, drunkenness, sadness,
that go on at a big wedding.

De Niro still claims
that The Deer Hunter

is the most physically
and emotionally taxing film

he has ever made.

And this is the man who starred
in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

He was the backbone of the project.

He opened doors
to the New York acting community,

persuading John Cazale
and Meryl Streep to be in the film.

And of course,
he went deep into character,

meeting real steelworkers,
hanging out at local bars.

The thrust of the story
is the violent juxtaposition

between home
and the horrors of Vietnam.

PRIEST: Blessed is the kingdom
of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Now and ever and unto ages of ages.

A-A-Amen.

Ah, blessed.

Hey, hey - hey, hey, hey.

The casting of De Niro's Mike
had come easily,

but finding the perfect Nick,
his best friend,

had seemed impossible.

Warmer than Mike, more open,

the doomed Nick is the glue
that holds the group together.

One morning,
casting director Cis Corman

slipped a folded-up piece of paper
into Cimino's pocket.

After another fruitless day
of auditions, Cimino found it,

unfolding the message to read:
"Christopher Walken IS Nick."

Walken would go in search
of real experiences,

but found that veterans clammed up,
even his own brother.

That silence spoke volumes.

So the year before The Deer Hunter
comes out, you've got Annie Hall.

Christopher Walken plays
a little part in that as,

very memorably, as Dianne Keaton's
psychotic brother.

He's got a quality about him,
which is both sort of everyman-ish.

He's kind of a normal-looking guy
in some respects,

but also, he has a little bit of...
There's an edge to him.Yeah.

You know, and he looks
like he could be dangerous.

And I think that's really what
probably worked in his advantage

when it came to taking
on the part of Nick,

because, of course,
the part of Nick is the one

which ends in a psychosis
of its own.Mm-hm.

You know,
when I think about the fact

that someone
like a young Jeff Bridges

was also auditioning for this part,

that is
a completely different performance.

Young Jeff Bridges looks
like a golden retriever,

he's, you know, that's not
Christopher Walken's energy at all.

Arguably,
the first on-screen representation

of trauma, of PTSD.

He's the first time anyone, I think,

had portrayed that to such a degree
that it was quite shocking.

I think Walken's excellent
in the role,

and he has a difficult thing
that he has to do,

which is that he is embodying
both specific psychological trauma,

but also it's pretty clear
that Cimino is aiming at it being

a larger thing
about American trauma,

and about what has happened
to the American psyche

and the disillusionment of that.

I mean, almost directly
after what happens to Nick,

when he reaches this, you know,
the final ebb of his story,

it cuts to the helicopters leaving
Saigon during the evacuation,

during the fall of Saigon.

So it doesn't take brain surgery
to kind of work out

that there is
like a metaphorical link being made,

which is not always an easy thing
for an actor to portray.

'But then,
suddenly we, too,

forty or fifty of us
in the safety of the coaches,

had to get out and fight our way
to the American compound,

where the helicopters
were landing to fly us

and the thousands more
out of the country.

Seeing us in the streets with
our bags, the Vietnamese followed.

Any chance, they thought,
was better than none.

But the embassy gates were closed

and we, like the frightened
Vietnamese and their families,

had to fight and claw our way up.

And we did claw and we did fight.

And if it wasn't
for one single American Marine

whose name I didn't have the chance
or time to discover,

we would never have climbed
our way to our evacuation.

He hauled us up, kicking
and punching Vietnamese,

who were clambering over our bodies.

What do you make
of Christopher Walken's performance?

It was the Oscar-winning performance
in the film.

The Nick character is complicated,

and in some senses, that's...

We had Best Years Of Our Lives,
I suppose.Mm.

But this was
the first frank portrayal of PTSD,

of post traumatic stress
in relation to war.

Look, I think one of the ways
of looking at the film...

..is that this is really,
it's a love story.

It's not... Meryl Streep is not
really part of that love story.

It's a love story between...

..the De Niro character
and the Walken character.

It's a love story
that we know will end badly.

It's a love story
that neither can contemplate openly.

It's a love story that cannot
sort of speak its name, in a way.

Even that's maybe going too far.

I do remember thinking...

that this was at the heart
of Cimino's own fascinations.

Because as a very young journalist,

I interviewed him
about Thunderbolt And Lightfoot,

And I brought up this thematic thing

about the kind of
latent homo-eroticism

of the relationships in the film,

and he lost his temper
in the most spectacular fashion,

I think at the Dorchester Hotel,
and hurled me out of his suite.

He was enraged.

And I remember the publicist
standing outside going,

"What happened, what happened?"

And I said, "I've no idea."

So this was, you know...
And I realised then,

and years later I met him
in a very different context,

I realised then this was a place

that he was touched
but did not want to be touched.

And that was touching to us,
but in a very, very painful way.

And I think it's at the heart
of the film's quality...

..is that it speaks of masculinity.

And I think
David Thomson talks about

the impossible difficulties
of American masculinity,

the culture of the gun.

He encapsulates it
around the one-shot philosophy.

And the film encapsulates it
at the very end,

with these shattering, only
five words of dialogue, five words.

And De Niro says to him,

"I love you."

And he says back, "One shot."

And pulls the trigger
and blows his brains out.

And that's the end
of the love story,

it's the end of the dream,

and all that's left
is to close the film,

and that's how we end up in the bar.

ANGELA: It's been such a grey day.

Meryl Streep took the role
of the yearning Linda

because she wanted to stay by
the side of her partner John Cazale.

He was dying of lung cancer.

But De Niro had convinced Cimino

he was perfect as wastrel Stan,
left behind.

Cazale took the film because
he wanted to work with De Niro.

When EMI resisted his casting,
claiming he was an insurance risk,

both Cimino
and Streep threatened to drop out.

It was De Niro
who covered his insurance.

ARMSTRONG:
When Meryl Streep arrived to film,

she found that there were almost
no lines for her character, Linda.

And indeed, Michael Cimino said,
"Well look,

she's not really written,
do you want to write her yourself,

and develop the lines yourself?"

So she said
in an interview later on

that that was both
an enormous opportunity,

but actually quite daunting.

So how are you going to create
the character, literally,

not just in your sort of method
or your understanding

or your interpretation, but
how do you actually write the part?

So she thought of the girls
at home who she went to school with,

who were waiting
for a man to rescue them,

whose idea about life was,
"Who will marry me?

Who will I be able
to attach myself to?"

And that's how she created Linda,

someone who was only alive,
in a sense,

through the men who were beside her.

And she portrays a woman
who really struggles

with lots of fairly
straightforward circumstances.

She's looking all the time,
to find an arm to hold.

She's initially in love
with Christopher Walken,

Robert De Niro's character
is in love with her,

but she doesn't really know
how to handle this idea

that there are two men, she only
knows the man she wants.

And then when Christopher Walken
doesn't return,

but Robert De Niro does,
she attaches herself to him.

"This is my way to exist,
this is my way to be."

It's a very...
it's really interesting.

When you think that, you know,

Meryl Streep arrives on set
to play this character,

as a woman who is very in charge
of her career and life,

and is about to forge one
of the greatest Hollywood careers,

in charge
of all the decisions she makes.

And the first part
that she has to create from scratch,

she creates someone
who is entirely dependent on men

for her own existence.

It's very interesting actually,

because Meryl Streep was
dating John Cazale at this time,

and John Cazale was very unwell.

He had been diagnosed with
terminal lung cancer at that point,

and so a big part
of why she ended up taking the role,

was that, you know,
they wanted her for it,

she said she felt it was,
a little bit at first,

of a bit
of a stock girlfriend character.

But she came to imbue that role
with so much more,

and part of that was
for her own personal reason -

she didn't wanna be separated
from her boyfriend when he was,

you know, seriously unwell.

And so she took on the part.

There was also the problem of the
insurance,

which was that nobody
would want to insure an actor

who was basically on death's door.

So there are various stories
around how they got around it,

but there was a point
where the producers

were actually asking Cimino
to rewrite a version of the script

in case John Cazale didn't make it
to the end of filming.

Thank God that didn't happen,

and Cimino was completely
against the idea anyway.

There are also very fine performances
from John Savage as Steve,

who returns from Vietnam
in a wheelchair.

And George Dzundza as John,
another who is left behind.

Pierre Segui
as the French businessman,

who runs the Russian roulette den
in Saigon,

had been a military pilot
in the Indo-China War,

and also appeared
in Apocalypse Now.

The cast were asked to go
beyond themselves.

Cimino instructed De Niro,
Walken and Savage

to never take off their uniforms,
no matter how filthy they became.

They didn't shave, they didn't wash.

Trapped in water-logged cages,
drifting volatile rivers,

leaping from helicopters.

The cast inspired each other
to reach a new level of realism.

I can't feel my legs.

MIKE: Alright, alright, come on.

My arm.

Push yourself up.

The entire film was shot on location.

Cleveland was used
for the steelworks,

Clairton in Pennsylvania
was used for the town exteriors,

and the Cascade mountains
in Washington

for the scenes
of the friends hunting deer.

The wedding sequence that lights
up the beginning of the film

would run for 40 daring minutes,

a feast of naturalistic detail.

In his travels, Cimino had attended
a Serbian wedding.

He saw the bride and groom sip
together from the same cup of wine.

If they spilled a drop,
it would mean bad luck.

In the film, we see a small stain
form on the bride's dress.

The opening wedding sequence
in The Deer Hunter

is critical to the film.

It's a very unusual piece
of character development

in Hollywood terms.
Most of the time in a screenplay,

you'd find a character developed
through a series of maybe three

or four actions
at the beginning of the film,

where you go, "Oh, I understand,

they've saved the cat,
they've looked after the kid."

We get the senses
of the sort of person they are.

Michael Cimino wasn't interested
in that kind of shorthand.

The script had
a wedding sequence in it,

which lasted on the page
for 21 minutes of the film.

And Michael Cimino, in the end,
delivered over 50 minutes.

It took him five days to shoot.

And he gave the extras real alcohol,
and he filmed and filmed and filmed,

take after take after take,
until towards the end,

the actors were tired, they were
chaotic, they were falling over.

And a lot of the sequences
which end up in the final film,

are actually accidents on set,
or things that weren't scripted.

Because Michael Cimino
wanted the naturalism,

the realness of a wedding
where people were drunk and tired

and falling over and messing around.

And so it becomes
increasingly sloppy

in an incredibly realistic way.

By the end of that 51 minutes,
you know these people.

He's given you enough detail,
without underlining it,

without hammering it home,

"Oh, this is a person
who will do this thing,

this is the kind
of person they are."

You just feel that you've seen
into their lives, you've...

you know, you've snuck into
that wedding and you've watched.

For the shocking contrast of Vietnam,
they shot in Thailand.

Cimino wanted
to revitalise a landscape

he felt audiences
had become inured to

after night upon night
of news footage.

They filmed in Bangkok for Saigon,

and on the famous River Kwai
for the devastating middle act

in the prison camp.

NORMAN: What's fascinating
about their entry into Vietnam

is that their war
doesn't last very long.

They go from one status,

straight into the terrible
sort of cages in the water,

in which they are
sort of taunted and beaten.

And eventually forced

to play out this game
of Russian roulette.

Walken said, "I'm not entirely sure

how I'm going to actually be able
to play this sort of terror."

I mean, they were
in terrible conditions, anyway.

But I'm not sure I've got
the sort of wherewithal to do this.

And De Niro said to Cimino, he says,

"Why don't you get
the guy playing the main guard,

the main sort of torturer,

to actually really slap us,

you know, whenever we hesitate,
just slap us."

And Walken said...
I mean, him as well.

Walken has subsequently said,
you know, he said, you know,

"Once you've been slapped 50 times
around the head quite hard,

really, you don't have
to act having the shakes."

He said it was, it really worked.

He said it wasn't pleasant,
but it really worked.

Go ahead, Nicky, go ahead, Nicky.

It's gonna be alright,
it's gonna be alright.

Go ahead, go ahead, Nicky.

Over the years,
the film has courted controversy

for its portrayal of the Viet Cong
and their use of Russian roulette.

Cimino claimed reports existed
of Russian roulette dens in Vietnam,

but more important
was its dramatic function.

It was a device to capture
a soldier's constant anxiety,

never knowing if this was going to be
the day you die.

Its legacy is an Oscar-winning film,
won Best Picture and Best Director.

Yup.
It, for a short space,

made Cimino sort of
the chosen son of Hollywood.Yes.

Yet it's never shaken off this idea

that its portrayal of Vietnam
is somehow negative.

Context is everything.

The question that politically,

the world was divided on Vietnam.

This was really what, in a way,

was the beginning of the realisation

that the Cold War could
never be won.

The realisation that the superpowers

would mince any millions
of people necessary to death

in the meat grinder
of the Cold War conflict.

So focusing on these soldiers
and on these blue-collar characters,

rather than on the suffering
of the Vietnamese...

..was in itself, inimical,
I would say, to liberal opinion.

Now, that is true,

but film is not a realist medium.

And I think at the time, I remember
when I wrote up that interview,

I said the portrayal was of America
with a gun to its own head.

That sense of,

well, this is deeply troubling.

This is not a celebration
of nationhood,

this is an attempt
to clutch at something

that's almost beyond reach
in terms of hope.

So it shows us that the POW camps
are these horrendous places,

and by 1978, many of the ones
who did return had come home,

so there was some understanding
in the American public and in,

you know, international
understanding of what had happened

to a lot of these men
in these camps.

Having said that,
it's not entirely realistic.

It isn't really based on any kind
of documentary reality,

it is, essentially, melodrama.

So it's worth taking it
with a grain of salt.

But having said that, it's still
a pretty remarkable accomplishment

for a second-time ever director,
to go all the way to Thailand,

which had no infrastructure
for filmmaking really at the time,

on the verge of a military coup,
and make this film.

Crowning its success
at the box office,

The Deer Hunter
would win five Oscars.

Best Sound, Best Editing,

Best Supporting Actor
for Christopher Walken,

and the ultimate achievement
of Best Director and Best Picture.

The film was established
as a classic,

Cimino as a great new talent,

a reputation that would be consumed
in the budgetary

and artistic excesses
on his next film Heaven's Gate.

Cimino had consciously focused
on the effect of the war

on blue-collar men.

Through this prism,
the political ramifications

of the great American folly
could be prised open.

The ordinary man's love
of his country is movingly captured,

as the remaining friends gather
and sing God Bless America

at the end of the film.

The moment is unspeakably sad,
yet defiant.

I mean,
one of the things that did happen

with the release of The Deer Hunter,

was that it gave an insight
into the American public

about the sort of things
that the soldiers had gone through.

Even not specifically
about the Russian roulette,

but the sort of pressures
and the psychological damage,

particularly,
that they would have gone through,

which is not visible -
I think that's what's important.

Physically,
if they were physically damaged,

they had the veteran's, you know,
hospitals and things like that.

If they were
psychologically damaged,

they had almost no support
whatsoever.

And that, I think... that alone
opened up the whole debate

about post traumatic
stress syndrome, all those things,

the damage that was done
to these men internally,

in their heads,
that you can't actually see,

suddenly became real.

Cinematically, it was
as if the floodgates had opened.

With The Deer Hunter, a new
anti-heroic realism was established,

not only in the depiction of combat,

but in revealing the psychological
impact war had on soldiers.

Apocalypse Now
was nearing completion.

Oliver Stone was writing
his exploration

of the Vietnam experience
with a platoon.

Hal Ashby, Barry Levinson,
Brian De Palma,

Stanley Kubrick and Spike Lee
would be drawn to its flame.

American film
would never be the same.

Watching the film again
after all these years,

I found myself crying
as I watched the last scene,

and I was sitting alone
watching the film.

It's very rare to have
that experience of viewing a film

for the fourth or fifth time
in one's life,

and be so transported.

And that's not just
about the performance.

It is the dramatic construction
of this idea,

the idea you're referring to.

Where, somehow,

the social commentary,
which is realism,

the mythic construction
of the film, which is epic...

..and the intimacy
of how it touches us

in respect of our own feelings
about each other.

And how all men, at some level,

are touched by this idea
of the bond between men.

I think it brings those together

in a really unusual
and quite unique way.

It's remarkable to see
the film survive so well

after, you know, 40 years.

God bless America

Land that I love

Stand beside her and guide her

# Through the night
with the light from above

From the mountains,
through the prairies

To the oceans, white with foam

God bless America

My home sweet home

God bless America

My home sweet home

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