Michael Cimino might even top Stanley Kubrick as the most indulgent director of the 1970s, an era of American cinema rich with examples of renegade auteurs exceeding their authority. Cimino only produced two movies in the 1970s, and they couldn’t have been more dissimilar in style. Clint Eastwood, a man who insisted on doing no more than a few takes of any given scene, starred in “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,” director Michael Cimino’s debut film from 1974. Eastwood, who worked as both a producer and a star on the “Thunderbolt” production, kept Cimino under control.
That would not be the case with Cimino’s subsequent motion picture, 1978’s “The Deer Hunter,” which would go on to become the director’s finest in terms of aesthetic worth and its bloated length. The filmmaker demanded a staggering amount of takes for virtually every scene in Cimino’s film about the psychological and sociological effects of the Vietnam War on blue-collar Americans in order to capture as fully as possible the experiences of its cast of people.
The wedding of Steven (John Savage) and Angela (Rutanya Alda) in the steel town of Clairton, Pennsylvania, may ironically be “The Deer Hunter’s” most contentious scene. If its POW soldiers are forced to play Russian roulette with loaded guns by the North Vietnamese Army, that scene is “The Deer Hunter’s” most notorious. Robert DeNiro and other cast members passed out on site and in front of the camera as a result of director Michael Cimino pushing his actors and crew to the limit in order to capture the harsh edges of reality for what he wanted to be a difficult and nasty movie.
The never-ending wedding
The wedding of “The Deer Hunter” lasted for five days rather than the typical few hours. While the Clairton sequences for the movie were filmed in four different locations, Cleveland, Ohio’s St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral served as the location for the wedding scenes. As extras partied it up in the event that was recorded in the nearby Lemko Hall, Cimino and his team worked to create a lively, energetic, and, above all, authentic environment for the sequences. They had them consume real alcohol and beer.
This strategy probably worked well for the lead actor De Niro, who by the late 1970s had developed a reputation for meticulous character studies and dedication. Cimino was more than pleased to cater to the preferences of his star performer, even going so far as to offer De Niro a wallet containing a driver’s licence bearing the name of his persona. Before filming started, the entire ensemble, including De Niro, spent a week hanging around. Christopher Walken, one of the actors, recalled that they “went to a real Russian wedding, large, with food and dance” for study.
The wedding sequence was shot in the middle of principal photography, thus none of it could adequately prepare the cast and crew for the marathon of the real shoot. By that time, the movie had already over its budget, and Cimino was urged by his producers to rush through a scene that had every indication of being drawn out, both in the production process and in the final product. Cimino complied with such advise before moving forward and shooting the way he had always wanted to, looking for the distinctive characteristic he had in mind for the opening act of the movie. Michael didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew he was looking for something exceptional, according to director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond.
One instance stands out in a sequence that ends up having several memorable moments: the scene where Stanley (John Cazale) exuberantly pulls up a reserved but beaming Michael (De Niro) in order to drag him to the dance floor. A real-life mishap that relates to the genuine atmosphere Cimino was attempting to convey occurs when the two guys collapse into the ground upon their arrival. Zsigmond clarifies “They felt so worn out. Although it was definitely an accident, [Cimino] was seeking for that.”
‘The heart of the film’ almost doesn’t make the final cut
The wedding scenes in “The Deer Hunter’s” were so well done that producer Barry Spikings referred to them as “the heart of the picture.” The management at Universal Studios, however, didn’t share that viewpoint. The executives discovered Cimino’s version of the film to be little over three hours long, which they felt to be “endless,” as Universal president Thom Mount put it, noting that the wedding scene in particular was “a cinematic event all unto itself.”
At that moment, Universal acquired control of the film and Mount gave the material to Verna Fields, the studio’s head of post-production. According to Mount, Fields “began to turn the heat up on Michael,” slicing the wedding sequence by around 20 minutes. Various versions of the reactions to those screenings exist for both the shorter cut from Universal and the director’s cut from Cimino. The option of which version to distribute was made by Bernard Delfont, the chief executive officer of EMI (the record business that produced the film as one of their first forays into cinema), and he went with Cimino’s.
To the eternal benefit of “The Deer Hunter,” the lengthy wedding sequence was thus kept in the movie. It’s a beautiful, captivating, and crucial collection of sequences that wonderfully illustrates the connection between the cast of individuals in the film, illuminating their normal lives before to the events of the war, which cause everything to change. It also serves as a companion piece to “The Godfather,” a movie with another renowned wedding-related opening scene. Both movies contrast the joy of such a momentous occasion with the sorrow that will shortly follow. Additionally, Cimino was able to convey a palpable feeling of reality in the wedding sequences in “The Deer Hunter,” with De Niro and Cazale’s on-set breakdown serving as the most memorable and authentic example.
