Once Upon a Time in America

Born into a family deeply involved in the cinema industry – his father a director and his mother an actress – Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone developed a passion for movies at an early age.  Growing up on film sets, he was immersed in the world of filmmaking, which shaped his creative vision.  He began his own career working as an assistant director on Hollywood projects shot in Rome, including the landmark “Ben Hur”.  This experience allowed him to understand the intricacies of large-scale productions and set the foundation for his own unique style, characterized by epic storytelling and innovative techniques.

As the public’s interest in historical epics waned, Leone shifted his attention to the American Western, a genre he would redefine with the micro-budgeted “A Fistful of Dollars”, released in Italy in 1964.  The film’s unexpected success made it the country’s highest-grossing release to that point and led to two loosely connected sequels, each more ambitious and visually striking than the last.  Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” introduced audiences to a new kind of Western, marked by their morally ambiguous characters, expansive landscapes, and Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable music.  The trilogy not only established Leone’s reputation as a master filmmaker but also catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom with its U.S. release in 1967.

Buoyed by this success, Leone was offered the opportunity to direct a Hollywood-backed production, culminating in the mythic and operatic “Once Upon a Time in the West”.  With its sweeping narrative and grand scale, the film was a financial triumph in Europe, though its U.S. reception suffered from heavy studio cuts that undermined its emotional depth.  Despite this, it marked a pinnacle of Leone’s Western vision, blending a heartfelt farewell to the genre with his signature stylization.  His most personal and ambitious project, however, was yet to come.

Leone discovered Harry Grey’s gangster novel “The Hoods” while completing the “Dollars Trilogy” and became captivated by its introspective take on crime and violence.  Starting in the early 1970s, he began developing a film adaptation, drawn to the novel’s themes of endless regret and the irreversible nature of choice.  Leone sought to create a cinematic experience that felt like a memory – fragmented, elusive and filled with nostalgia.  “Once Upon a Time in America” became a fifteen-year labor of love, transcending traditional gangster narratives to explore the emotional damage hidden within friendship, ambition, betrayal, and the relentless passage of time.

“Once Upon a Time in America” follows the story David “Noodles” Aaronson, a Jewish gangster from New York’s Lower East Side.  Opening with the end of Prohibition in the 1930s and jumping into the 1960s, the film expertly uses a non-linear storytelling structure to shift between Noodle’s past and present as he reflects on the choices that defined his life.  As the narrative settles into the 1920s, it centers on Noodles and his childhood friends Max, Patsy, and Cockeye.  Leone’s visuals and obsession for detail are breathtaking, as we track their rise from small-time hoodlums to powerful figures in the criminal underworld.

Their ascent is marked by intense loyalty but also growing tensions, especially between best friends and bootlegging partners Noodles and Max.  Brilliantly portrayed as adults by Robert DeNiro and James Woods, their alliance reaches its crossroads at a foreboding meeting with powerful and malevolent Italian mobsters, well-played in cameos by the always welcome Joe Pesci and Burt Young.  Max harbors grand ambitions for himself, with dreams of evermore daring and lucrative heists, while Noodles clings to a more cautious approach, having served the past twelve years in prison.  His only wish is for Deborah, the focus of his deep infatuation.    

Both his childhood crush and now the object of his deepest affections, Deborah is intelligent and motivated, always having dreamt of a life beyond the rough neighborhood where they grew up.  While they share an unrequited love, she rightly sees Noodle’s lifestyle as a barrier to their future together.  Hoping to impress her with the elegance and romance of the evening, Noodles takes Deborah on an elaborate date to a luxurious restaurant on Long Island, but their deep emotional differences and his underlying possessiveness ultimately overshadow the night.  Their story reaches its unambiguously brutal end, leaving behind pain and regret.

With Noodles isolated and despondent, Max becomes increasingly driven and reckless.  Fearing that Max’s latest heist will end in tragedy, Noodle’s secretly betrays his friends by tipping off the police, hoping to protect them from harm but instead leading them to their deaths when the raid ends in violence.  Wracked with guilt, Noodles goes into hiding, only to return years later after receiving a mysterious summons.  As he revisits the shadows of his past, he discovers its secrets are far from buried, forcing him to confront the consequences of his actions as well as the elusive nature of memory itself.

Upon its release in 1984, “Once Upon a Time in America” faced significant challenges.  The studio cut Leone’s original 229-minute version down to a 139-minute version for its U.S. run, rearranging to a chronological structure and removing key scenes, causing the resulting cut to be critically panned and a box-office failure in the States.  However, the longer version, released in Europe, garnered acclaim for its epic scope and emotional depth.  Over time, the restored version of the film has solidified its status as a true masterpiece of cinema, with critics and audiences recognizing it as one of Leone’s finest works. 

A deeply melancholic reflection on loss, Leone’s film explores how the choices made in youth ripple across a lifetime, shaping and haunting those who made them.  The fragmented narrative, shifting between different time periods, mirrors Noddle’s own struggle to piece together his past, contrasting the innocence of youth with the realities of adulthood.  Revered for its artistry, atmosphere, and rich character study, its legacy endures through its influence on later filmmakers and its place in the canon of American gangster films.  It continues to resonate as a poetic elegy to lost time, tragic love, and the unattainable illusion of dreams.