Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980) is, from a multitude of perspectives, a book-end. If Owen Wister is said to have spawned the Western genre (in fact a slightly spurious claim, given the multifarious incarnations of the myth in popular culture prior to The Virginian), Cimino is widely credited as its …

“Society”, opines Reinhard Kolldehoff’s gleefully shady lawyer, “has many ways of defending itself: red tape, prison bars and the revolver”. His line serves a dual purpose. On a narrative level, it suggests to the key protagonist Vito Cipriani (Oliver Reed) the futility of resistance against the state apparatus facing him. …

Fade in. A lone bounty hunter occupies centre-frame of a long shot amidst an arid Andalucían desert landscape, his recently-slain human quarry sprawled limply over the saddle of a spare horse. As the camera pulls out to reveal Glenn Garvin waiting in the near foreground, the inevitability of a stylised confrontation …