The cult status of Days of Heaven is earned on the back of its stunning cinematography. No film before or since has more effectively taken advantage of the “magic hour,” that brief twilight period of ethereal light that immediately follows the setting of the sun.

Bathed in the transcendent aura of this delicate light, the film creates a feeling of nostalgic melancholy perfectly befitting its bittersweet tale of love, jealousy, betrayal, and redemption.

This “magic” cinematography transforms what is otherwise an ordinary love triangle into a sublime expression of the divine. Profound and beautiful, Days of Heaven is cinema at its most awe-inspiring.