Bill and Abby, a young couple who to the outside world pretend to be brother and sister are living and working in Chicago at the beginning of the century. They want to escape the poverty and hard labor of the city and travel south. Together with the girl Linda (who acts as the narrator in the movie) they find employment on a farm in the Texas panhandle. When the harvest is over the young, rich and handsome farmer invites them to stay because he has fallen in love with Abby. When Bill and Abby discover that the farmer is seriously ill and has only got a year left to live they decide that Abby will accept his wedding proposal in order to make some benefit out of the situation. When the expected death fails to come, jealousy and impatience are slowly setting in and accidents become eventually inevitable.
Written by
Theo de Grood
Plot Synopsis:
-------------------

Bill (Richard Gere), his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and his young teen sister Linda (Linda Manz) are forced to flee Chicago when Bill accidentally kills the foreman (Stuart Margolin) at the steel mill at which he works. They hop a train and eventually arrive at a wheat farm in the Texas panhandle. Bill secures work for them as sackers by lying to the foreman (Robert J. Wilke) about prior experience. Bill and Abby pretend to be brother and sister to avoid suspicion.

Although Bill squabbles with the foreman who considers his performance subpar, the three enjoy the work. The wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard) begins to fall in love with Abby and asks her to stay with him after the harvest. Bill is jealous, but when he overhears the doctor tell the farmer that he has only a few months to live, he encourages Abby to accept his proposal. After the other itinerant workers leave, the farmer and Abby are married. The foreman is suspicious and considers Bill and Abby to be con artists, leading the farmer to send him away.

The farmer, Abby, Bill and Linda spend an idyllic year on the farm, playing in the river and fields and having many picnics. The farmer's health recovers quickly, and he no longer seems near death. He treats Bill like a brother but notices that Bill has begun to grow restless and irritable. Bill realizes that Abby is beginning to fall in love with the farmer. However, she is actually torn between her love for the two men. During a visit by a wayward Italian circus troupe, the farmer begins to suspect that Bill and Abby are lovers. When Abby tells Bill this, he decides to leave the farm with the circus troup.

With Bill gone, Abby, the farmer and Linda form a stable family for nearly a year. But as the itinerant farmers return, so does Bill. He tells Abby that he doesn't blame her for deciding to stay with the farmer and that he will leave them alone. But the farmer, watching them from afar, misinterprets their final embrace and realizes the true nature of Bill and Abby's relationship. But before he can confront them, locusts arrive at the farm. Bill tries to help with the efforts to burn the pests out, but the farmer attacks him. In his rage, the farmer sets his fields on fire. Bill races off into the night, and the farmer, nearly insane, ties Abby to a column on the porch.

The next morning, while surveying the damage, the farmer finds Bill. When he threatens Bill with a gun, Bill stabs him and mortally wounds him. Bill takes Abby and Linda away in the farmer's car, which they later sell in order to purchase a boat. They travel down river but a posse, led by the foreman, pursues them. One morning, the police catch up to the fugitive trio. Bill is shot down trying to escape.

Abby has inherited the farmer's fortune. She deposits Linda in the kind of boarding school/dance academy that she herself had dreamed of as a child, then leaves on a train with American soldiers going off the fight in World War I. An older girl (Jackie Shultis) who Linda had befriended that first fall on the farm finds her in the boarding school. Together they run away.

-----Note to author of below: opening credits, narrators and concepts such as "scenes" are not part of a synopsis. It also does not include every single detail, such as one character helping another with a cigarette, or use dialog in lieu of narrative description.------The films opening credits portray old photos of turn of the century America with a musical theme that recurs throughout the film, Carnival of the Animals The Aquarium by Camille Saint-Saens. Outside Chicago, Bill (Richard Gere) is shown firing up the furnace at a steel mill. He gets in a fight with the steel mill foreman (Stuart Margolin) and accidentally kills him. He runs away. His kid sister Linda (Linda Manz), begins narrating the story. She begins by recounting how things were that have not happened in the movie yet the days of heaven. Bill is helping his lover Abby, (Brooke Adams) with a cigarette as he explains that things will change for them eventually they are down on their luck. The three of them hop a train to Texas, where they sit with dozens of others on the roofs of the trains boxcars. Linda explains that she met someone once who told her that someday the world will go up in flames and the good people will avoid it, but for the bad people, God don't even hear you talkin'. Everyone gets off the train and Bill quickly negotiates a job working on a wheat field for $3 per day as a sacker. He lies about his experience as a "sacker" to get the job.

All three get jobs as laborers on the vast wheat field of a farmer (Sam Shepard). Linda makes a friend (Jackie Shultis) in the wheat field. The farmer checks the quality of the wheat in the field to see if its ready for harvest. Prayers are said for a good harvest. Scenes of people using farming equipment follow. Linda narrates that the farmer is falling for Abby for some intangible reason. Bill has told everyone that Abby is his sister, and gets in a fight with a field hand who suggests otherwise. Bill and Abby share a moment in the shade of a wagon. Linda is shown plucking a pheasant. There are more scenes of the harvest. The farmer is shown asking questions of one of his workers about Abby. The farm foreman (Robert J. Wilke) comes by inspecting Bill and Abbys work and docks them $3 for wasting wheat when making bushels. Bill complains but the foreman threatens to fire him and Bill backs down. Bill is concerned about Abbys hands which are sore and rough from the work and wants to find the doctor. The men swim in a pond after the days work is done.

Bill sneaks up behind the doctors wagon and steals some ointment for Abbys hands. While he behind the wagon he overhears the doctor explaining that the farmer has about a year to live. Linda narrates that the farmer knew he was going to die, and that people live only once so they should have it nice. The farmer finally speaks with Abby. She explains she is from Chicago. Linda roasts a peacock over a spit, as Bill tells her a joke: "I saved your life today. I killed a shit-eating dog. I'm always lookin' out for you." Apparently a joke by comedian Redd Fox - acknowledged in the end credits in the Thanks section. Bill and Abby have a talk in a haystack. Bill explains they will eventually go to New York and this is only temporary. The harvest continues on. Linda explains if people didnt work they were shipped right out they didnt need you. They could always find someone else. The farmers accountant explains its a 6-figure harvest, his best ever. The farmer gets up and takes a look at Abby through his telescope. There are more scenes of the harvest.

The farmer comes up to Abby and offers her to stay instead of going on up north. She excuses herself quickly without answering to go talk to her brother. Bill and Abby splash around in a river. Bill begins to scheme. He suggests that she tell the farmer she will stay. There is a night scene of the harvest, the very end of it. Linda asks Bill if they are going to stay and he explains its up to Abby. Linda has a conversation with her friend about a worker who she was going with who abandoned her. Linda continues to narrate about Bill getting tired of living like the rest of them, like pigs. Bill figured some people need more than they got, and others got more than they need. It was a matter of getting everyone together. A man dances on a wooden plank to a tune played by harmonica. Bill and Abby continue their discussion about staying. A night time celebration with a bonfire and music occurs. Abby tells the farmer she can stay but shes got to keep her brother and sister with her. Lindas friend says good bye and many people leave on a train similar to the way they arrived. Linda questions Abby about why she wants to stay and she explains this isnt so bad to the way she had to live earlier, wrapping cigars, never seeing the light of day. The foreman questions Linda about what they did in Chicago before. Bill explains to the farmer a half-story about how he worked at the mill in Chicago. The farmer tells Abby he loves her. Bill begins to scheme.

He suggests she marry him (since he is about to die). She is reluctant. The farmer and Abby get married along the river. The foreman is a joyless best man. The farmer and Abby take off of on their honeymoon. When they get back Linda explains they all never had it so good. The rich got it figured out. All four of them have a playful meal on a gazebo. They play makeshift golf. Bill sneaks Abby out of the house one night for some play in the river and tells her he never wanted to fall in love with her. They sneak in a bit late, after the farmer has begun calling for her. Life goes on. The foreman tells the farmer he thinks they are a couple of con-artists. The farmer takes offense and they have a falling out. The foreman quits and leaves and as he drives away, he stops to tell Bill and Abby he knows what they are doing and warns them that boy is like a son to me. The farmer senses some distance from Abby. A shot of a newspaper shows that president Wilson is on a whistlestop tour. They all go out to watch his train go by. Linda narrates that the farmer wasnt getting sicker as fast as they planned. Maybe the doctor gave him some medicine. Bill and the farmer go hunting for pheasant. The farmer remarks that Bill seems jumpy. Right during their conversation a Fokker tri-plane and a Sopwith camel come into a view as a flying circus lands right in their field. just as things were about to blow says Linda. The circus brings entertainment. Bill kisses Abby one night at the gazebo but the farmer sees it. He confronts Abby later about this strange behavior with her brother. She denies anything unusual but remarks to Bill that the farmer seems more paranoid. Bill is now angry that Abby seems to be in love with the farmer. Bill who is in a bit of a huff, gets a lift from the flying circus to take care of some business. The farmer and Abby are now alone.

There are loving scenes between Abby and the farmer. Linda narrates that the farmer taught her the keys on the piano, the parts of a globe. Life continues. The following spring comes. The wheat begins to ripen. Bill comes back on a motorcycle and sees Abby dancing on the porch. Later, Abby apologizes to Bill. Bill explains he regrets not knowing what he had with her, and pushing her into this plot. Bill kisses Abby on his way to leave, and the farmer sees him from up on the roof with his weathervane. He seems a bit sickened.

A close-up of a two locusts on some lettuce in the kitchen is a portent of a problem. They are shown bothering the birds. Things evolve rapidly. Abby begins swatting locusts all over the house. They are shown all over the wheat. A red storm flag is hoisted, and a warning siren is sounded, and the workers pile into the field to get rid of the swarm by any means possible. The farmer out in the smoking fields is suspicious of Bill and swings his lantern at him starting a fire. The fire spreads and starts to burn the entire field. Bill and Abby are silhouetted against the fire and she says, "He knows".

The hands desperately try to put the fire out but it burns everything. The farmer aggressively intimidates Abby up in the bedroom, throws her down and gets a gun out of his desk. He ties her hands together and calls her a liar. The next day, the farmer is riding through his burnt out fields looking for Bill and finds him fixing his motorcycle. The farmer aims a gun at Bill but bill stabs him with a leather punch. The foreman finds the dead Sam Shepard. The three of them flee.

They head down river in a boat. Linda narrates that no one is perfect, youve just got half devil and half angel in you. She explains that Abby will lead a good life from now on, she blamed it all on herself. Linda talks about all the things they see on the boat ride. In parallel action, the foreman begins to track them down.

Wild turkeys gobble in the forest, where Bill, Abby, and Linda have camped. Bill walks under some trees, and notices police officers at their ferry boat at the river, presumably looking for him. They spot him and come chasing after him with dogs and horses. He gets back to the tent and grabs a shotgun. He tells them to keep down and then tries to run away as he is pursued. Eventually, he makes a run along the shore line and ends up in a gunfight. He is shot and killed by one of the pursuers on horseback. In her grief, Abby sobs over Bills body as detached people on the shoreline look on.

The next scene is Linda in a dancing class. Abby has enrolled her in a dance academy. We dont know exactly how much time has passed. She tells Linda shell be all right, turn around and go inside. Abby walks to the train station through a small town. Young men are boarding a train to participate in World War I which the U.S. has just gotten involved in. A band plays a tune to bid the soldiers goodbye as Abby boards the train with the soldiers.

The next morning, Linda escapes from the dance academy. She runs into her friend from the fields who has a new boyfriend. He's in the Army. Maybe he'll get killed or something. I don't know. Anyway, he said I'm pretty. They race away and chat at the railroad tracks, and then walk down the rails towards an uncertain future. Linda narrates This girl, she didn't know where she was goin' or what she was goin' to do. She didn't have no money on her. Maybe she'd meet up with a character. I was hopin' things would work out for her. She was a good friend of mine.

The shot of locusts ascending to the sky was shot in reverse with the helicopter crew throwing peanut shells down, and actors walking backwards.
------------------------

Cinematographer Nèstor Almendros was going blind during production. Before each shot, he would have his assistant take a picture with a Polaroid camera and then would view it under a high-powered magnifying glass.
------------------------

Shot almost entirely at "magic hour," the hours between day and night early in the morning and late in the evening. Terrence Malick wanted to have a white sky and no sight of the sun. This was the first film to utilize a new Eastman ultra light-sensitive stock negative which enabled clarified images to be shot in the magic hour; at dawn, at dusk and into the night.
------------------------

In an interview conducted for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film in 2007, Richard Gere speaks of a shot in the film during the wheat fire where a "monstrous" antiquated tractor is driven through the flames. According to Gere, director Terrence Malick was the driver.
------------------------

After filming for a short time, Terrence Malick threw out the script altogether and filmed for a close to a year allowing the actors to "find the story" for the film as they went along.
------------------------

Terrence Malick spent two whole years editing this film.
------------------------

The film's title is a reference to Deuteronomy 11:21 - "That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them as the days of heaven upon the earth."
------------------------

After a year of editing, Terrence Malick called Sam Shepard to Los Angeles to shoot inserts. Close-ups of the actor shot under a freeway overpass were cut into the final film.
------------------------

John Travolta auditioned for and won the lead role of Bill, but ABC-TV wouldn't let him out of his contract for his series Welcome Back, Kotter (1975), and the part was eventually given to Richard Gere.
------------------------

Even though Richard Gere's first notable role was in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), he actually made this first, but the film took two years to edit and wasn't released until 1978.
------------------------

The screenplay is loosely based on the Milady back story featured in "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas. In the Dumas novel, Milady was originally born Anne de Bueil and became a thief with her lover, a priest who had renounced his orders. On the run, they pretend to be brother and sister and hide in a village. She ends up seducing and marrying for her own interests the local nobleman. In most of the adaptations of the novel, the back story is missing, but the Italian adaption Il boia di Lilla - La vita avventurosa di Milady (1952) focuses on the very same events depicted in 'Days of Heaven (1978)', naturally with very different character motivations.
------------------------

Despite the film's commercial failure, Charlie Bluhdorn, who ran Paramount's parent company Gulf+Western, loved it so much that he offered Terrence Malick $1 million for his next project, whatever it was.
------------------------

Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman turned down the role of Bill.
------------------------

Blown up to 70mm for re-release, these prints were accidentally lost when a Paramount in-house memo requesting that surplus copies of Days of Thunder (1990) be destroyed was misinterpreted.
------------------------

Comedian Redd Foxx received special mention in the closing credits, for the use of one of his jokes in this exchange between Bill (Richard Gere) and Linda (Linda Manz): "I saved your life today." "How?" "I killed a shit-eating dog."
------------------------

Cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who got an "additional photography" credit in the film, complained to Roger Ebert that more than half of the footage was shot by him.
------------------------

First use of the Panaglide, Panavision's version of Garrett Brown's Steadicam.
------------------------

This is Christian Bale's, who often works with Terrence Malick, all-time favorite film.
------------------------

After finishing the film, Terrence Malick began to develop a project for Paramount entitled "Q". Riddled with production troubles, Malick would abandon this project after a brief span of second unit location shooting. He would not make another film until The Thin Red Line (1998), twenty years later. Ideas that began with the abandoned "Q" movie would later be re-worked into The Tree of Life (2011) and Voyage of Time: Life's Journey (2016).
------------------------

Exteriors for the film were shot in Alberta, Canada. Jack Fisk constructed the outdoor sets from plywood, including the farmer's house.
------------------------

Because of the delays, the film went over-budget and, to cover the extra expenses, producer Bert Schneider had to mortgage his home.
------------------------

The visual motif of the far-off farmhouse surrounded by wheat fields is reminiscent of Andrew Wyeth's 1948 painting "Christina's World" as well as Edward Hopper's painting "House by the Railroad". It is also reminiscent of Reata, the ranch home of the Benedict Family in Giant (1956).
------------------------

The music behind the titles is "Aquarium," from Camille Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals."
------------------------

The plot also appears closely related to the Henry James novel "The Wings of the Dove", with genders reversed.
------------------------

With its Oscar win for Best Cinematography, this is, as of 2016, the only film directed by Terrence Malick to win an Academy Award.
------------------------

According to an interview with Roger Ebert, cinematographer Haskell Wexler shot more than half of the film's footage, but Nèstor Almendros (stated Wexler only worked 19 days out of 72) received sole credit as "director of photography", while Wexler received only an "additional photography" credit, much to his chagrin. This denied him the chance to win another Oscar for Best Cinematography. In the same interview Wexler added that afterwards, because there was a little dispute, he realized that Nestor set the style, and together with Terry set everything, everyone else who presented what was in front of it was theirs, so then Wexler thought the way the titles are is correct. And Wexler emphasized that because Nestor's not here for himself, and he was a great, good guy, and Wexler loved him very much.
------------------------

Linda Manz, an unknown at the time, won the role over Tatum O'Neal.
------------------------

When Lynda sits in the farmer's house reading a book that has illustrations of animals, including a tiger, water buffalo, and a snake, the book is an illustrated edition of Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Books".
------------------------

According to 'Carrie Fisher', she was interviewed for a role and even read with 'John Travolta'; when he couldn't do the film and Fisher read opposite 'Richard Gere', the chemistry she had with Travolta wasn't there, which she suspects is why she wasn't cast.
------------------------

Ranked at #49 on BBC Magazine's "The 100 greatest American films".
------------------------

Although filmed in Alberta, Canada, the film takes place in the Texas panhandle, which is mentioned. We also see a Texas license plate and the Texas flag is flown outside the house.
------------------------

The film features a brief scene of dogs hunting the prairie. The German Shorthaired Pointer (GSP) shown is Jocko von Stolzhafen, twice GSP National Champion (Field) and perhaps the best GSP of his era. A year or so later Jocko vanished while running at a training camp, presumably stolen.
------------------------

The film is included on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list.
------------------------

Glimpses of Charles Chaplin and Edna Purviance in The Immigrant (1917) can be seen in the long montage.
------------------------

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
------------------------

Included among the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.
------------------------

The image of Bill falling face-first into water was filmed in a large aquarium in Sissy Spacek's living room.
------------------------

The two WWI aircraft in the film had their first flights in December 1916 (the Sopwith) and July 1917 (the Fokker Triplane) so it's highly doubtful that either one was flying in Texas in 1916-17, when the story takes place.
------------------------

In the hunting scene, ring-necked pheasants are clearly seen. Ring-necked pheasants, a non-native game bird, would not be introduced to Texas until 1933 or 1934.
------------------------

The biplane in the "Flying Circus" is a De Havilland DH 82 Tiger Moth, an aircraft first produced in 1931.
------------------------

Any Fokker Dr.1 triplanes available just after WWI would have the original rotary engine, rather than a radial engine. The difference is that the rotary engine spins along with the propeller, and a radial engine doesn't. The Fokker in the 59th minute clearly has a radial engine.
------------------------

At about 7:25 into the movie, we see a bucolic farmyard scene, with a group of white ducks waddling by...yet we hear sound effects of Canada Geese.
------------------------

Just after the opening of the film at the steel mill, we see a freight train going across a high trestle in silhouette, with the roofs of the cars perfectly empty, but immediately we get a closeup of the train's roofs, looking forward, and it has scores of migrant workers sitting and sprawled on the roofs of the cars.
------------------------

Towards the end of the movie, Bill fires three shots from a double-barreled shotgun without reloading.
------------------------

The Texas flag is displayed upside down.
------------------------

At the beginning of the movie where the train is pulling up toward three red grain elevators with sunburst symbols on them, people are seen hopping off the train. Stenciled one of the train cars is A.P.R.A., which stands for Alberta Pioneer Railroad Association, which never had a rail line operating in the panhandle of Texas. This portion of the film was shot in Alberta, however.
------------------------

0