Forty-eight years ago, on September 13, 1978, Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven opened theatrically in New York City, introducing audiences to a 94-minute American drama that would eventually acquire an extraordinary reputation as one of cinema’s supreme visual achievements. The film had screened the previous evening for Film Society of Lincoln Center sponsors and benefactors before opening at Cinema I on Third Avenue.
Starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, and Linda Manz, Malick’s second feature follows Bill, Abby, and Bill’s younger sister Linda as they leave Chicago for the Texas Panhandle, where they work on a wheat farm and become entangled with a wealthy farmer. Its deliberately spare story was never the principal reason the film became legendary. The images were.
Malick and cinematographers Néstor Almendros and Haskell Wexler largely relied on natural illumination, with production making extensive use of the brief periods around sunrise and sunset known as “magic hour.” Film at Lincoln Center describes Almendros as being hired specifically for his command of natural lighting, saying his work “draws out and amplifies” the inherent beauty and poetry of the film…