Days of Heaven is a 1978 American romantic period drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick, and starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard and Linda Manz.

[4] Set in 1916, it tells the story of Bill and Abby, lovers who travel to the Texas Panhandle for work harvesting crops for a wealthy grain farmer.

Film editing took Malick a lengthy two years, due to difficulty with achieving a general flow and assembly of the scenes.

She recalls that a religious man once warned her of a vision of apocalyptic hellfire, and notes that at the Last Judgment, God will rescue the good and turn away the evil.

In Texas, a wealthy farmer suffering from an unspecified malady hires as many seasonal shockers as he can find, including Bill and Abby, who pretend to be siblings to deter gossip.

Seeking a new life, Abby leaves Linda at a boarding school and departs on a train with soldiers headed for World War I.

In addition, Jackie Shultis plays Linda's friend on the farm, who later helps her escape the boarding school, while future Louisiana Music Hall of Fame inductee Doug Kershaw appears as the fiddler.

Before 1975, Malick had tried and failed to get Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino to star in the film, and John Travolta auditioned for and won the lead role of Bill, but ABC-TV refused to release him from his contract for the television series Welcome Back, Kotter.

He and Malick cast young actors Richard Gere and Brooke Adams and actor/playwright Sam Shepard for the lead roles.

Paramount Pictures CEO Barry Diller, who wanted Schneider to produce films for him, agreed to finance Days of Heaven.

[17] Malick admired cinematographer Néstor Almendros's work on The Wild Child (1970) and wanted him to shoot Days of Heaven.

They drew inspiration from painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Edward Hopper (particularly his House by the Railroad), and Andrew Wyeth, as well as photo-reporters from the start of the 20th century.

[20] Jack Fisk designed and built the mansion from plywood in the wheat fields and the smaller houses where the workers lived.

The mansion was not a facade, as was usually the custom, but authentically recreated inside and out with period colors: brown, mahogany, and dark wood for the interiors.

A vast majority of the scenes were filmed late in the afternoon or after sunset, with the sky silhouetting the actor's faces, which would otherwise be difficult to see.

"[19] The harvesting machines constantly broke down, which resulted in shooting beginning late in the afternoon, allowing for only a few hours of light before it was too dark to go on.

One day, two helicopters were scheduled to drop peanut shells to simulate locusts on film; however, Malick decided to shoot period cars instead.

[19][24] The production ran so late that both Almendros and camera operator John Bailey had to leave due to a prior commitment on François Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women (1977).

Wexler sent film critic Roger Ebert a letter "in which he described sitting in a theater with a stop-watch to prove that more than half of the footage" was his.

According to editor Billy Weber, Malick scrapped much of the film's dialogue, replacing it with Manz's voice-over, which served as an oblique commentary on the story.

[19] After a year, Malick had to call the actors to Los Angeles, California to shoot inserts of shots that were necessary but had not been filmed in Alberta.

[30] Morricone recalled the process as being "demanding" and said of Malick: "He didn't know me very well, so he made suggestions, and in some cases, gave musical solutions.

"Harvest" is the film's main theme and opens with a melody that references "Aquarium", the seventh movement from Camille Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals.

[32] The soundtrack was remastered and re-released in July 2011 on the Film Score Monthly label, in a two-disc edition and featuring excerpts of Manz's narration.

[33] The country music heard during the harvest party is the Cajun tune "Swamp Dance", played and sung by Doug Kershaw.

Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader wrote: "Terrence Malick's remarkably rich second feature is a story of human lives touched and passed over by the divine, told in a rush of stunning and precise imagery.

But watching this 1978 film again recently, I was struck more than ever with the conviction that this is the story of a teenage girl, told by her, and its subject is the way that hope and cheer have been beaten down in her heart.

The website's consensus reads, "Illuminated by magic hour glow and wistful performances, Days of Heaven is a visual masterpiece that finds eloquent poetry in its spare scenario.

On October 23, 2007, the Criterion Collection released a DVD of the film, with digitally remastered sound and picture, supervised by Malick, editor Billy Weber and camera operator John Bailey.

Bonus features include an audio commentary by art director Jack Fisk, editor Billy Weber, costume designer Patricia Norris, and casting director Dianne Crittenden; an audio interview with Richard Gere; video interviews with Sam Shepard, Haskell Wexler, and John Bailey; and a booklet featuring an essay on the film by Adrian Martin and an extract from Néstor Almendros' autobiography.