C'era una volta in America

My title sums up the film, albeit cliche, the film is a masterpiece. The story of a gang's rise from the prohibition years to the 60s. The film's main 2 character's are the focus of the picture. Without trying to spoil it, the film addresses 3 distinct eras in their lives.

The film explores the heart, Noodles soul. A man struggling with himself, someone who plays evil acts, a man who sees the pure in his childhood sweetheart. A man never at peace.

The film is directed by Leone, a master of his art. I'm a huge fan of his work. Each of his films got better and better, and Once Upon A time In America was a picture which had all the experience which he achieved in the 60s. It's almost a gift to himself.

The film's locations are stunning, authentic and dirty.

The screenplay is excellent, but the direction makes the film. Maybe one or two characters were underwritten, but it seems that the director wanted us to talk about the picture, discuss the possible loose ends, make up our own minds. Leone's methodical pacing is stunning.

The acting is tremendous, can't praise James Woods and Robert De Niro enough, awesome!

The photography is beautiful, it lacks colour giving it a gritty look, perfection!

Morricone delivers another masterpiece, his score adds further depth and backups the director's story.

See it wide-screen, this film is a stunning piece of cinema. Leone, you were the master!

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.

Many people compare "Once Upon a Time in America" with "The Godfather". In my opinion these two movies can't be compared. Both are masterpieces in their own way, but each of them has a different style. You don't compare a Picasso to Michelangelo's Sixteen Chapel either, do you?

What is it that makes this movie a masterpiece? Well, first of all there is the director. Sergio Leone is a real master when it comes to creating a special atmosphere, full of mystery, surprises and drama... He's one of the few directors who understands the art of cutting a movie in such a way that you stay focused until the end.

The way the movie was cut is also the reason why a lot of Americans don't think this movie is very special. There are three versions, but only the European version is how the director imagined it to be. He didn't want his movie to be shown in chronological order (1910's - 1930's - 1960's), but wanted to mix these three periods of time. The studio cut the movie in chronological order, loosing a lot of its originality and therefor getting a lot of bad critics. If you want to see this film the way Sergio Leone saw it, you have to make sure you get the director's cut.

The second reason why this movie is so great is the music. Ennio Morricone, who is seen as the greatest writer of film music ever, did an excellent job. Together with the images, the music speaks for itself in this movie. From time to time there isn't said a word, but the music and the images on their own tell the story. He understood perfectly what Sergio Leone wanted and composed most of the music even before the movie was shot.

Last but not least there is also the acting and the script. The actors all did an excellent job. But what else can you expect from actors like Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci... They helped making this movie as great as it is by putting there best effort in it. The script helped them with it. It took twelve years to complete, but it hasn't left any detail untouched. The writers really thought of everything when creating it.

I can really recommend this movie to everyone, but especially to people who like the gangster genre. When you want to see the movie, you better be sure that you will have the time for it. This isn't a movie that is finished after 90 minutes. You'll have to be able to stay focused during 3 hours and 47 minutes, which will certainly not be easy during the first 20 to 30 minutes. Some scenes at the beginning only make sense when you have seen the end of the movie. But when you are able to stay focused, you'll find this one of the best movies you've ever seen. I certainly did and I rewarded it with a well deserved 10/10.

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.

Make sure you watch the 220 minute version which is perfect. The butchered 139 minute version should never have been released and the added faded clips in the much longer 269 minute version aren't worth it.

It's not an easy watch. The story builds patiently and jumps back and forth in time, spanning three generations. It's not the usual gangster flick, but a tale of forgiveness, betrayal, greed and nostalgia. The sets, the fantastic score by Morricone, De Niro at the pinnacle of his career.

A beautiful epic swan song by the master Sergio Leone this is.