Steven Bach(1938-2009)

Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival in 1990.

Heaven's Gate (1980) left few viewers merely cold. There was something else there that aroused antipathy in many, and the anger of the critics is still discernible in their condemnations of it (whether they are right or wrong). That something else, I think, is a pervasive nihilism that runs through the film from its advertising slogan - "What one loves in life are the things that fade" - to its climactic and violent reworking of history. That nostalgic-sounding slogan is finally reductive. It narrows the world instead of enlarging it.