Once Upon a Time in America (2003, DVD)

Sergio Leone's final film (1983) "Once Upon a Time in America" is a film that polarizes viewers. Many of those who love cinema love it. Although it is a "genre picture" (species: gangster film), many of those looking for "popcorn movies" with heroes clearly distinguished from villains and easily digestible plots hate it. There are a number of aspects I don't like about it, and I'm not sure that it is a good movie, but I think that it is a great film.

Getting through the first 15 minutes is a challenge. They are very, very violent and more than a little confusing. Hours later, there is some sexual violence ("date rape" is way too tame a characterization) that is also horrifying.

The male characters are certainly misogynists, and it would not be difficult to argue that the movie is, too. The only sympathetic character of either sex in the long movie is a minor character, the son of a saloon-keeper who is a loyal friend to "Noodles," the Jewish Lower East-Side delinquent who grows up to be a gangster, Fat Moe (Larry Rapp, Mike Monetti).

"Noodles" (portrayed as a young man and as a late middle-aged one by Robert De Niro, as a dreamy adolescent by Scott Tiler) is the protagonist of the film, and of the several complicated stories within it. Arguably, much of it is his stream of consciousness, though, if so, deciding from when he is remembering is up for grabs. (For sure, the film is novelistic in complexity and length and modernist in construction.)
There are times during which his yearnings make him almost sympathetic, including (unexpectedly!) at a train track in the Gare du Nord and throughout the last quarter hour of the film. The climax of the film is stunning. For me, it redeemed most of what had frustrated me or made me cringe in the preceding 3.5+ hours. Some of the mysteries are revealed, but new ones open in the climax and the anticlimax(es--the Mack truck may be a climax of the Max story, and the final scene calls a whole lot into question). IMO, even though aged in ways that we know were not the ones in which DeNiro would age (like Elizabeth Taylor's older woman in "Giant": it just isn't right!), his playing of the older character is far superior to his playing of the younger one. I might even say that it is great.

Robert De Niro has a lot to do as "Noodles." James Woods has less to do (less time on screen). As the very ambitious, very driven, and thoroughly unscrupulous Max, Woods is superb. He uses the seemingly unconscious feelings "Noodles" has for him, as well as the conscious unswerving loyalty. Like Woods generally ("Citizen Cohn" leaps to mind as another totally unscrupulous character Woods has played), Max is a flamboyant character. The young Max (Rusty Jacobs) lights up a larger world (of more serious and intricate crime) for "Noodles," so it really is the character, not just Woods that is flamboyant and charismatic. (Indeed, I'd say that Jacobs is more charismatic here than Woods is.)

With considerably less time, Tuesday Weld turns in what I think is the best performance in the film. She is also not a likable character, but is utterly compelling in two scenes--one in a car talking to "Noodles," one getting reacquainted with the gang, deciding who is the Alpha-male.

In the other female lead, Elizabeth McGovern is good, but not as good as the adolescent forerunner in her part (Jennifer Connelly). McGovern is a very acute analyst in her retrospective suggestion that there is insufficient chemistry between Woods and DeNiro, so that the main love story is somewhat unconvincing. I'd say she also lacks chemistry with DeNiro, but I would say that of all actresses and DeNiro. (I am not suggesting that he is gay, but the heterosexual behavior of his characters that I remember are not heteroerotic or heterosocial: they use women for momentary sexual relief, but do not convincingly care for let alone yearn for them.) McGovern was also saddled with most of the worst lines in the movie and an underconcieved part (though the latter never seems to slow James Woods down!). Connelly is mesmerizing as the young tease/ambitious performer.

"Once Upon a Time in America" has one of the great Ennio Morricone musical scores with some distinctive themes, including one very loaded Lennon-McCartney one: "Yesterday." It also works in "Amapola," "Night and Day" and Rossini's overture to "The Thieving Magpies." It is not just that the nonoriginal music fits, but the viewer who recognizes what the music is has the resonances from the apt title. The thieves are less playful than magpies; erosion by time is a major theme, etc. Plus, there is memorable use of Kate Smith singing "God Bless America" at the James Hoffa-invoking anticlimax.

Also, not least because of the richness of the musical score, the tension of some scenes without any music are heightened (for instance, when "Noodles" returns from "vacation").

The richly textured, sometimes deep-focus cinematography was the work of Tonino Delli Coli, who also shot "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" for Leone, a number of Pasolini movies, from "Mama Roma" through "Salo," including The "Decameron" and "Porcile," plus "Death and the Maiden," "Lacombe, Lucien," "The Name of the Rose," "Life Is Beautiful," etc. The often dark (neo-noir) images are as moody as the characters. Practically every frame is a visual composition one could top to admire. (In a few instances, there is time to do so. Like while the phone is ringing and ringing and ringing and "Noodles" is drifting into an opium haze.)

The sets throughout are phenomenal. Credit for art direction goes to Carlo Simi who also was responsible for the art direction of "Once Upon a Time in the West" and Leon's Eastwood "Man with No Name" trilogy.

The plot? Nearing the end of Prohibition (1933) a Jewish gangster hides out in an opium den, recalling the last few hours of mayhem and the long-term commitment of a gang that had been five youths. To say anything about the 35-years-later plot would constitute spoilers. If you want to know the plot, you have to work for it, stay with Leone, and then still make interpretations. It's a movie about gangsters, but not a "popcorn movie." Didn't I say that in the first paragraph? (And I thought I was going to write an express review! But like the length of the movie, the length of the review is what it is taking me to say what I want to say...)

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This is a movie with a flashback to 1921 that lasts an hour and a half without the flashback being the bulk of the movie. Moreover, the flashback with no stars is key. Fortunately, their story is engaging, showing the characters were hardened killers, and some of what shaped them/where they came from.

The structure is complex with some major matters open to variable interpretation. I would not say that my favorite Leone movies (Once Upon a Time in the West: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) are "simple-minded"; there is a lot going on in them, though greed is predominant. It is difficult to get one's bearings on what is going on and even the four-hour version has some loose threads in addition to what I think was intentional ambiguity.

The "special edition" DVD has a less-than-special video transfer and splits onto two discs at a point that is indefensible. I have only listened to Richard Schickel's commentary on the second disc, but found it interesting, even though. Schickel has an interpretation of the film with which I do not agree, but is not by any means a stupid one. And he calls attention to details in the movie that deserve the attention, supplying what some regard as "background" and others as "trivia" sparingly.

There is also a 19-minute part of a BBC documentary on Leone that deals with making his last movie (which had 15 years of "preproduction" planning after reading Harry Gray's novel The Hoods with Leone planning every shot), and an extensive gallery of production stills. Some of the interviews of writers on the movie and of two of Leone's daughters are dubbed annoyingly. James Wood supplies a LOL anecdote sufficient to justify watching the documentary.

What is most important, however, is restoring the hour and a half that was cut from Leone's movie before it was shown in North America (the goings-on rearranged into chronological order and without Morricone's music(!!!!!); Pauline Kael wrote of the Warner Brothers American release, "I don't believe I've ever seen a worse case of mutilation," and Roger Ebert called it a "travesty."). The 229-minute version that was a success in Europe offers enough interpretive challenges. The hacked-up American release made no sense which made it seem longer than the nearly-4-hour version!

Although not nearly as anguished as he was by the American butchering of the movie, Leone was pained about cutting about half an hour (having gone form 10 hours to 4.5, the 4.5 to 238 minutes involved sacrificing some footage he really wanted to keep). I am hoping that that half an hour is around and that eventually there will be another version, and if split onto two discs, split at a less disrupting point! And I'm curious about what is in the 238-minute Italian version that is not in the 229-minute international edition.

And I know, that although I had the special edition DVD almost 5 years before swallowing hard and setting out to watch it... and then spending 6 hours watching it and I don't know how long writing about it, I am going to watch the whole d__ned thing again, and am tempted to start it all over now!

2006, Stephen O. Murray