It was a scandal that bankrupted a studio, stunted a promising career, and didn't need the ubiquitous "gate" suffix. Michael Cimino's un-cut four hour disaster, rentable on video and dug up by the Anthology Film Archives as part of an Isabelle Huppert retrospective, is really as bad as you've heard it is.

Cimino's mega-budget flop is remarkable visually, indeed even the hateful Hollywood establishment couldn't help but nominate its art direction for an Oscar. Costuming, props and Wyoming landscapes are all well presented. The dirt and smoke of this "true western" force one to ask if Cimino didn't spend his enormous budget building a way-back machine to the 1890s. Too bad he didn't bring a story with him.

Well, there is a story hidden in Heaven's Gate, a good one at that. An idealistic Harvard lad (Kris Kristofferson) travels out west to be the beacon of learned righteousness in the badlands. A colony of Eastern European immigrants (except for the prostitutes, who are all French hotties) are doing their best to till the soil there but are not having an easy time of it. Some resort to stealing. As a result, the Stock Association (run by super-wasps Sam Waterston and John Hurt, in yet another winkingly homosexual role) assemble a death list of 125 of the local immigrants. They are bountied at $50 a head and the killing, headed by Christopher Walken, commences. Sounds not half bad? Would that the film stayed on this topic! Instead, hundreds of miles of film are dedicated to desultory and ponderous speeches among Kristofferson, Walken and their mutual love interest, prostitute Isabelle Huppert, pronounced as in Oooh (what a) Pair! Indeed, Huppert's frequent and un-necessary full frontal shots are the only interesting oases among these dreadfully boring and endless sequences.

Cimino tries hard to pull a few pages out of his Deer Hunter book. The film opens with dozens of celebrating men running around and yelling, but whereas these lengthy athleticisms helped shade the growing understanding of a broad palate of characters in Deer Hunter, all it shows in Heaven's Gate is that someone bothered to teach Kristofferson and Hurt authentic gay '90s drinking songs. Also, the scene where Kristofferson reads names from the Associations death list is supposed to duplicate the fatalistic tension of the well-known Russian Roulette sequence between Robert De Niro, John Savage and Christopher Walken. In lieu of the shredding of emotions an audience feels in the earlier film, one is subjected only to a drawn-out list of names, looks of shock and a whole bunch of yelling in un-translated tongues. And Jeff Bridges shows up on roller skates, but that may have been an earlier scene.

I can pick apart Heaven's Gate all day long, but what's really the point? Much more interesting, I think, is the very fact that it was showing in public this week.

The Anthology Film Archives has the look of an underfunded public school run by the radical left. No marquis, no popcorn, just mimeographed flyers for upcoming events. John and Yoko used to hang there, and avant-guru Jonas Mekas still programs much of their "essential cinema" series. Anthology Film Archives is one of the few places one can go to see non-narrative, experimental filmed art pieces outside of a museum. Screenings, lectures, benefits, old people with David Ben-Gurion looking hair and wine & cheese abound. If ever a foreign film is playing, be sure to ask if there are subtitles (I got burned at a screening of Godard's Masculin-Feminin, I thought of my ticket price as a small donation to this not-for-profit establishment.)

Therefore, the audience at any given Anthology screening is going to bring snobbery to a whole new level. The underground, East Village patrons will often shun the other art houses (specifically the warm, cozy West Village Film Forum) as too commercial, what with their held over runs of Saltmen of Tibet and all. It stands to reason, then, that a near-four hour screening of what is considered to be one of the worst films of all time would fit in well here. Because if they (society) rejected it, it must be good.

Plot has never been a pre-requisite for Anthology-goers. Nor has sound or picture quality. At one "essential cinema" showing I went to (in the secondary "Maya Deren room") of 8mm collages and Christ imagery, I was too embarrassed to ask if the sound was screwed up or we were supposed to hear that low hum.

During the five minute intermission I kept my head down, a little humiliated that I was not fleeing the theater before the second two-hour block would begin. It was a feeling, I'm sure, not dissimilar to an old porno theater. This was cerebral porno. We were all masochists, purposefully subjecting ourselves to cinematic boredom, no matter how we rationalized it (for a thesis, a study, an article . . .) No one spoke during the five minute intermission. No one but me, that is. At the urinals downstairs (unkempt and falling apart, in traditional NEA form) I remarked, "Gee, I'm beginnings to see why everyone hated this picture." The small, black-sweatered man responded with a shrug. He was French and I spoke too quickly for him. Whatever.

There is a jug band version of "The Blue Danube" in Heaven's Gate that is amusing.

Anthology Film Archives is located on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street in Manhattan. Phone 212-505-5110 for a daily schedule of events.