#Deer hunter movie#
Some people though did not like how the movie used Russian roulette. Many critics said it was the best American epic since Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. The movie's first reviews were largely enthusiastic. A full-scale release was on February 23, 1979, just following the Oscars. After the Oscar nominations, Universal widened the distribution to include major cities. The release was to qualify the movie for the Oscars. ĭeer Hunter was shown at one theater each in New York and Los Angeles for a week on December 8, 1978. River Kwai, Thailand, Prison camp and first Russian roulette scene.Weirton, West Virginia, for mill and trailer shots.Struthers, Ohio, for external house and long-range road shots.Steubenville, Ohio, for some mill and neighborhood shots.North Cascades National Park, Washington, mountain scenes.Sai Yok, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand.Patpong, Bangkok, Thailand, the area used to show Saigon's red light district.US Steel Central Furnaces in Cleveland, Ohio.The name is clearly visible in one scene. Also in Tremont, the wedding banquet was shown here. The name plaque is clearly visible in one scene. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral, in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. Rutanya Alda as Angela Ludhjduravic-Pushkov.He was the second person to be cast in the movie, after De Niro. They were so impressed with him that they offered him the role. He was the foreman at an East Chicago steel works visited early in pre-production by De Niro and Cimino. Chuck Aspegren as Peter "Axel" Axelrod.He died just after the movie was finished. Streep, whom he was dating at the time, and Cimino said they would walk away if the studio fired Cazale. Because of his illness, the studio wanted to get rid of him. All scenes with Cazale, who had terminal cancer, had to be done first.
Cimino suggested that Streep write her own lines. In the screenplay, Streep's role was very small. Before Deer Hunter, Streep had a small part in Fred Zinnemann's Julia and the eight-hour miniseries Holocaust. Universal kept Scheider to his three-picture contract for them by making him do Jaws 2. Savage was a last-minute replacement for Roy Scheider, who dropped out of the production two weeks before the start due to "creative differences". His won his first Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor. He said that the scene where Michael visits Steve in the hospital for the first time was the most emotional scene that he was ever involved with. De Niro said this was his most physically exhausting movie. Cimino would introduce De Niro as his agent, Harry Ufland. De Niro prepared by talking with steelworkers in local bars and by visiting their homes. Producer Deeley wanted De Niro for The Deer Hunter because he felt that he needed De Niro's star power to sell a movie with a "gruesome-sounding storyline and a barely known director". In 1996, The Deer Hunter was picked to keep in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay. It was named by the American Film Institute as the 53rd Greatest Movie of All Time. The movie won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It is set from 1967-1975 and is about three friends from Pennsylvania affected by the Vietnam War. The Deer Hunter is a 1978 American war drama movie. Best Picture, Barry Spikings, Michael Deeley, Michael Cimino, John Peverallĥ. Best Supporting Actor, Christopher WalkenĤ. This is nitpicking compared to the overall construction of the film.1. Yes, there are technical deficiencies in the sound, but it hardly matters. The strong points of the film are the outstanding performances of nearly every actor in the movie. That's why the scenes all revolve around frivolity and seemingly senseless boyish behavior it creates such a stark contrast to the devastated characters of the three who went to war (and the relatively unaffected personalities of those who stayed behind, like Stanley). We have to sense the careless and frat-boy-like immaturity of these young men. It wouldn't have worked nearly as powerfully as it does had the first hour been trimmed down. The whole point of the movie is to show us how the various characters were affected by the war. They're not supposed to they're for character development. Of course many of the scenes in the first hour don't advance the narrative. In my opinion, these comments miss the point of the movie. A comment re the other comments: A lot of the comments criticize the first half hour as being too long.