THE recent passing of film director Michael Cimino saw much praise heaped upon the man’s most famous film, The Deer Hunter. Such attention is understandable – The Deer Hunter’s tale of small town family and friendships torn apart by the Vietnam draft is an undeniably sublime slice of 70s cinema, after all – but it shouldn’t obscure his other silver screen achievements.
Delve a little deeper into his small but perfectly formed CV and you’ll uncover several other cinematic gems worthy of a critical repolishing. In a career that gave us just eight movies in total, Cimino delivered the sprawling Heaven’s Gate, a film once synonymous with bloated showbiz excess that now seems a grand statement in its own way, and undervalued cult efforts like Year Of The Dragon that many feel deserve wider praise.
Best of all in my mind is the film that preceded his Oscar-winning triumph with Hunter and served as his first full director credit in 1974. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot starred Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges and stands proud today as one of the finest road movies ever.
In fact road movie barely covers the magic of this wistful, faintly eccentric film of friendship and crime in 70s America. It’s a rare and quirky character study of society’s losers and low lifes that captures a lost world of Easy Rider-angled alternative lifestyle and counter-culture cool like little else in the 1970s.
At the core of it all, though, is a friendship that bridges the generations – a big thing in the 1970s. Eastwood rejects his tough-guy cop image of the time and plays against type as Thunderbolt, the weather-beaten old criminal and cow-town preacher who stumbles across the hippyish Lightfoot (Bridges) and builds an odd, moving bond with the younger drifter in the process.
Thunderbolt is on the run from his former partners (Geoffery Lewis and George Kennedy) but thanks to the young buck Lightfoot he decides to join up with old adversaries and rob the same bank one more time. There’s that slim heist plot to enjoy here but really it’s all about the characters.
The story goes that Eastwood, a star of considerable clout in 1974, originally wanted to direct the film himself but gave screen writer Cimino the chance to take the reins instead. It was an inspired decision as the director takes the vast John Ford-like vistas as his backdrop and puts his small-time protagonists firmly in the centre. You can feel Cimino’s future films success in the tightly-knit interplay on show. It may be more flippant and caperish in nature than The Deer Hunter but there’s a similar sense of world-weary sadness.
There’s a sadness and an inevitability about the characters' decline that makes the film tough going at times. It’s well worth the effort though.
Bridges steals the show as the lovable 'kid' to Eastwood’s grouchy 'old timer' and Cimino displays the sensitivity and style that would make him one of American cinema's truly great film-makers.
