Il était une fois en Amérique

Noodles returns to the New York of his youth in response to an invitation to come and meet. His return is his first for half his life having fled New York to avoid being killed for ratting out his gangster friends. His return is mysterious and he doesn't know why he has been summoned. His return sparks memories of his childhood and adulthood growing up in the area with his friends and eventual business partners.

A three and a half hour movie may not be everyone's idea of fun. On the other hand, many people who see a running time over 180 minutes immediately assume it is an epic that must be `the greatest film ever made'. In this case the time is worth the effort, even if it a little luxurious and overlong. The plot is too sweeping to go into detail, encompassing 30 years in the main part and a further 30 by way of suggestion. Basically it comes down to Noodles memories of his life when he was growing up, up till the point we find him now, as an old man with little but those memories. As a story this is moving and involving. There are maybe too many lingering shots of Noodles staring into the distance but these don't feel as lazy as they have in other films.

Noodles past and the misery of him now is involving enough, but the main thread is Noodle's past, both childhood and adulthood in crime and love. The sheer detail that must be covered is well done. The film not only includes many major events but also minor things like the scene where the boy is tempted to eat a cream cake! This mix is very rewarding and makes it feel a lot more detailed than it actually is. The story is a real feel of several generations of crime and is very involving.

The cast make the film and hold the attention during the scenes that are longer than they should be etc. De Niro convinces as youth and bitter old man and holds the eye easily as both. Woods is much better than usual even if his character is the same. McGovern is good considering she has a minor role, but as an `old woman' she looks the same as she was when she was young. Actors like Williams, Aiello, Forsythe, Hayden etc easily fill out the gangster etc roles without falling into cliché or caricature. Just as rewarding are the child actors who carry the first hour of the film. Not only do they actually look like the actors in question, but they also do a very good job. There are some bum notes but they do mange the innocence of youth with the emotional basis for the rest of the film.

The direction is excellent – both gritty streets but with an affectionate slant of Noodles' memories. The direction is made almost perfect by the use of Ennio Morricone's score. It is at once haunting but slightly warming and `Debra's theme' has become one of my favourite tunes. The overall effect is one of a rich tapestry that eventually weaves into a very personal epic of regret and loss.

An excellent film that deserves to be recognised as both one of the great crime epics but also a personal and moving film.

Oh, how to feel about this movie?

I was mostly riveted by it, let's get that out of the way. It's gorgeous to look at with those Sergio Leone compositions, and gorgeous to listen to with that Ennio Morricone score. Like so many of Leone's films, it has a plaintive, nostalgic glow to it that makes you ache emotionally without even knowing exactly what you're aching for.

And there's where I get conflicted with this movie. The character created by Robert De Niro is a repulsive human being. He murders, he rapes. The film cannot be forgiven for the way it handles rape. In one instance, the woman treats it like it was a naughty prank and comes back to fondle the rapist and his buddies in a scene played for laughs. In the other instance, the film at least has the decency to make it seem like something traumatic to the woman, but that woman is Elizabeth McGovern, who reappears later in the film and acts like she's full of regret over the relationship she and De Niro were denied, despite the fact that that relationship consisted almost entirely of him just stalking her and then taking her against her will in the back of a car when she tells him she's leaving for California to become an actress. We follow Robert De Niro both as a young man and as an older man looking back ruefully on his life, but we don't sense that he regrets any of the things he actually did. He just regrets what he lost. It's like he's sad that his days of murdering and raping without consequence are over, and that elegiac Sergio Leone tone left me wondering, what exactly are we supposed to be feeling nostalgic about?

So I guess I understand both people who think this movie is something great and those who think it's reprehensible. I guess it's proof that things can be many things at once.

Grade: A.

... Directors of all time. Let's start with a story. Many years ago, when your grandfather was still a boy, a failed, beaten-down actor named Clint Eastwood packed up his horse and saddle (speaking metaphorically here), left Hollywood forever (or so he thought) and headed out to Europe to pick up cash wherever he could. He ended up doing a film in Italy for an almost-unknown director named Sergio Leone and an almost-unknown sound guy named Ennio Morricone. The film was (as history would later record) an "Italian Western," that is, as the iconic western drama was all but disappearing in the US, it was being "re-imagined" by Italian writers and directors, and then filmed in Italy, using mainly Italian actors. On the set, Eastwood spoke in English and everyone else spoke in Italian. (Dubbing later fixed all that). Filming now over, Eastwood took his cash and left. Weeks later, in a bar in another part of Europe, he overheard mention that a certain film was the leading box office attraction on the continent. The name sounded familiar but, frankly, during production, a final name for the film he'd just done had not even been selected. He investigated. Yes, this was the film he had just completed, now titled A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS. The rest is history. Sort of. Two sequels were done with Eastwood playing the same character. Monster hits.

By this point the critics began to acknowledge not only Clint, but also the man behind the camera, Leone, who was one of the most promising directors of the era. HE DID THINGS WITH THE CAMERA THAT NO ONE HAS DONE BEFORE OR SINCE, especially his use of closeups, especially his ability to match powerful emotional orchestrals to key scenes. The fourth film in the series, done by Leone but by this time lacking Eastwood, was ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. (Eastwood meanwhile had returned to America as a major celebrity, formed his own production company, Malpaso, and over time became a director as well as the #1 box office star. Over the course of his career, Eastwood subtly voiced his distaste for Leone's work by scrupulously avoiding all Leone's trademark camera angles, even in his westerns!)

Back to Leone. While he lent his name to a handful of oddball productions, the last passionate work he left behind as his legacy was this film. OMG. What a film. Showcasing not only Leone's talent behind the camera, but also his musical magic as well as his ability to tell a complex tale like no one before him. It was by and large produced in obscure locations in NA, and the performances of the players, especially James Woods, and also de Niro, could possibly rank even today as the best they have ever given. (Also a performance from a young and charismatic Jennifer Connolly that by itself is worth the price of the ticket)

The film is magical. But here is the catch. Very few people have ever seen it. Even people who "think" they have seen it, really have not. The studio behind the film went berserk when they saw the length and, fearful of losing dollars when they could be changing reels and selling more tickets, they brought in a butcher to shorten it. Now maybe the new editor was not a butcher by trade, but he was sure one by disposition. The late Roger Ebert said that, in his career, this was the most abusive re-edit he had ever seen. The actual film, the one that Leone left, was not seen until years later when the director's version surfaced. It is astounding. It is magical. It is one of the best films ever made. It is a must see. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

This is, for me, one of the finest examples of cinematic art. It isn't a simple, cut-n-dried 90 minute little package that gets wrapped up with a pretty bow at the end. You get pulled in by the enigmatic opening that unwinds the threads of the story to be found later. For many people having half an hour of purely visual story telling, of stories that are only mysteries at that point, before anything becomes truly linear is difficult to follow and discourages to many people. Our own memories are only snippets that only become linear as we concentrate on scenes from our lives. Once Upon a Time in America is like that as we follow Noodles through the `significant' part of his life - the times that formed him. When the story actually starts, we meet the girl that he always loved but could never have.

David `Noodles' Aaronson (DeNiro) was a kid on the very mean streets of Brooklyn when organized crime was born in America and he grew into and out of it. That's the simplest synopsis of the plot. The reality is that this isn't a movie about gangsters. Being a gangster is the easiest way for Noodles to survive and get ahead, but it also alienates and ruins his one love. Whenever he is close to giving himself to Deborah he always gets pulled back into the gang, in some form or another.

DeNiro's portrayal is of a gangster, through and through, who also has a conscience that, while not preventing him from being a ruthless killer, rules his life with regret, remorse and guilt. Leone takes a bit of poet/historic license by showing the Brooklyn Bridge being built in the background (the bridge had been built 40 years before), but it symbolizes Noodles' own growth. When the bridge is just pilings and incomplete towers, Noodles is just forming his future. By the time the bridge is complete, Noodles is nothing but a gangster and the bridge is majestic. When he returns 35 years later our view of the bridge is from under a freeway -- the world has moved along, but the bridge and Noodles are just as they were.

The length: If you're looking for a brief distraction that you'll barely remember 30 minutes later, this isn't the movie for you. However, if you are prepared and able to be undistributed for the nearly 4 hours that this film uses to compress a lifetime -- you will be rewarded with many facets of thought and examination.

Sergio Leone's films are all love letters to America, the American dreams of an Italian who grew up at the movies, who apprenticed with Wyler, and Aldrich, signed himself Bob Robertson, and gave us Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Charles Bronson as we know them. Sadly, America didn't always repay the compliment. Leone's were "spaghetti westerns", money makers to be sure, but deemed disrespectful of the great tradition of Ford, Walsh and Hathaway. Many critics and Holllywood insiders called his earlier Eastwood films cynical and violent bottom-line commercial exploitation. By the time that they caught on to Leone's genuine popular appeal, the director had already moved on. And, his Once Upon a Time in the West was damned as pretentious, bloated, self-indulgent: an art film disguised as a Western, the Heaven's Gate of its day. That film's canny blend of pop appeal and pure cinematic genius gradually dawned on the powers that be (or were), and helped give rise to the renaissance of American filmmaking in the early seventies. It is worth noting that The Godfather could have been made by Leone, had he chosen. Leone had been pitching a gangster film that would encompass generations, for a generation or two, himself. Rather than do the Puzo version finally thrown back at him, he waited an eternity, and finally realized this, his last finished project. That ellipse of a decade or so between conception and completed movie is paralleled in the film, itself, by Robert De Niro's ("Noodles'") opium dream of the American twentieth century, its promises, and betrayals. Naturally, Leone was betrayed, once again, himself, by America, and this truly amazing film, with its densely multi-layered, overlapping flashback structure was butchered upon its release, becoming a linear-plotted sub-Godfather knockoff in the process. Luckily, the critics had grown up enough in the meantime to finally get a glimmering of what Leone was up to, and demand restitution. Very few saw it properly in theaters, but the video version respects the director's intentions, more or less. Ironically, Leone had foreseen television screen aspect ratios as determining home viewing of the future, and abbreviated his usual wide screen format for this movie, so this most troubled last project was the first released on video to most properly resemble the true cinematic experience. For diehard fans of the Eastwood westerns impatient with this at first, watch those movies till you want and need more. This will eventually get to you. For art film fanatics who don't get the earlier Leones, travel in the reverse direction, and you will be pleasantly surprised. This is the movie that Leone spent a decade conceiving. It will deliver for decades of viewing to come.