Michael Cimino’s magisterial, but flawed, Vietnam War epic was released into theatres only three years after Operation Frequent Wind, the chaotic Saigon airlift that sealed the United States’ fate and brought the conflict, for the West, to a humiliating close.

Starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage, with impressive support from Meryl Streep and John Cazale – who was dying of lung cancer during filming – The Deer Hunter told the tale of three Slavic-American steelworkers from redstate western Pennsylvania who headed to South-East Asia to fight the Communists, where they experienced unimaginable barbarity.

It is a symphony in three movements. The first draws out the blue-collar lives of the men, their friends, families, and lovers. They work, drink, shoot pool and hunt deer in the mountains. The camaraderie is lingered over, a Russian Orthodox wedding lovingly rendered, the sense of community, of hardship embraced, absolute.

The switch to Vietnam is an operatic shift of scale. Filmed in Thailand, Cimino captured the heat and sweat of the jungle, the drone of the choppers, the fear of the soldiers. Captured by the Viet Cong, De Niro, Walken, and Savage (Mike, Nick, and Steven) are held in half-submerged bamboo cages and – in one of the most memorable set pieces in the history of cinema – forced to play Russian Roulette by their guards, who bet on the outcome.