In the early 1900s, Bill (Richard Gere), a migrant worker on the run, persuades his lover (Brooke Adams) to welcome the advances of a wealthy but ailing Texas wheat farmer (Sam Shepard). Malick, famously abandoning his shooting script in favour of a more poetic approach to storytelling, sets a doomed love triangle against the grandeur and indifference of the Great Plains.

The film’s jaw-dropping beauty is checked by the savvy-naive commentary of Bill’s young sister (Linda Manz) and by the harshness of the migrants’ lives. It’s the fluid interplay between sound and image that makes the film so ravishing, exhilarating, and heartbreaking.

The screening of Days of Heaven on Sunday 4th (18.20) will be introduced by Manus McManus.

Notes by Manus McManus, IFI Film Collections and Acquisitions Manager