Days of Heaven (1978)
This film is set in 1916 and focuses on a migrant farm worker who drifts west with his girlfriend and plots to swindle his employer. A young Richard Gere gives a quirky, memorable performance.

At this point in history, the application of internal combustion engines to farming was causing an upheaval perhaps no less revolutionary than the invention of the wheel. This movie captures the wildness of that age, the sights and sounds of this new method of farming and the surge of population that followed jobs to the American Great Plains as fast as it could be plowed.  This masterpiece of cinematography conjures a spirit of the old West as large as a Texas Pan Handle thunder storm. You can smell the wheat, taste the sweat and feel grit in your boots.

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