Director: Sergio Leone
Writers: Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, Sergio Leone, Harry Grey (novel ‘The Hoods’)
Stars: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Williams

This review is part of the feature:

The 33 Gangster Films You Can’t Refuse

After making some of the greatest westerns ever in the sixties, Italian maestro Sergio Leone takes on another genre that features outlaws: the gangster film. The nearly four hour lasting epic – told non-chronologically in three segments – tells the story of four Jewish ghetto youths who grow up in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and make it big during the prohibition era.

It is not a typical American gangster movie, but sits closer to a European art film. The crime and violence often take a backseat while Leone explores other themes, like masculine friendship, love, guilt, regret and betrayal.

The main character Noodles (De Niro) is also not the typical gangster protagonist. He’s not very successful in his trade for one thing. His best friend Max played by James Woods is more the business mind of the group. Noodles is more concerned with pursuing the woman of his dreams: Deborah. But when she’s about to leave New York to follow her dream to become an actress, he violently rapes her and destroys their long-lasting relationship.

Then, after betraying his own friends to save them, he goes into exile for 35 years only to discover he’s been duped by the people he loved the most. It’s an extremely melancholic story that lets you experience the passage of time like no other work of art.

This mood is helped greatly by one of Ennio Morricone’s most emotionally moving scores. Leone has a unique vision, and while some choices may put off viewers (what’s with this endlessly ringing phone and stirring in a coffee cup?), it is a stunning movie in terms of cinematography, rhythm and mise-en-scène.

The ambiguous ending in which Noodles visits an opium den to forget his misdeeds for a while, opens the door to a double reading of the story: did Noodles fabricate the entire sixties segment out of guilt?

Leone turned down the offer to direct The Godfather, in favor of working on this project. He devoted 10 years of his life to this movie, and sadly it was to be his final one. He died of a heart attack in 1989 at the age of 60.

Luckily, with Once Upon a Time in America, he did get to complete his Once Upon a Time Trilogy, which also includes Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and Duck, You Sucker! (1971), a series of movies about American and Mexican mythology taking place in different eras.

Originally, the film was heavily edited by the US distributors without Leone’s involvement, which caused him a lot of pain. But when the original version of the film was released on home video in the US, it received the major critical acclaim it deserved as this is obviously a masterclass in filmmaking.