Once Upon a Time in America

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Once Upon a Time in America
Directed by	Sergio Leone
Produced by	Arnon Milchan
Written by	Novel: Harry Grey Screenplay: Sergio Leone Piero De Bernardi Enrico Medioli Franco Arcalli Franco Ferrini Leonardo Benvenuti Stuart M. Kaminsky (additional dialogue) Ernesto Gastaldi (uncredited)
Starring	Robert De Niro James Woods Elizabeth McGovern Treat Williams Tuesday Weld Scott Tiler Rusty Jacobs Jennifer Connelly Joe Pesci James Hayden William Forsythe Danny Aiello Darlanne Fluegel Richard Bright Burt Young James Russo
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	June 1, 1984
Running time	Original: 229 mins. US cut: 139 mins.
Country	United States Italy
Budget	$20 million (approx.)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Once Upon a Time in America (Italian title C'era una volta in America) is a 1984 crime film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. The story chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime. The film explores childhood friendships, loss, broken relationships, and the appearance of mobsters in American society.

The film premiered at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival in its original running time of 229 minutes (3 hours 49 minutes). However, it was released in the United States in a heavily edited and truncated version almost ninety minutes shorter than the original version released in Europe, against Leone's wishes. The short version eliminates the elaborate flashback structure of the film, instead placing all of the scenes in chronological order.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Novel 2.1 The Hoods 3 "Opium Theory" 4 Alternate versions 4.1 Unfilmed title scene 4.2 Deleted scenes 4.3 Film versions 5 DVD releases 6 Soundtrack 7 Awards and Nominations 8 Reception and legacy 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Plot

The film is made up of two extended flashback sequences (in 1921-1923 and 1932-1933, respectively), along with a framing device set in 1968. Summoned back to New York after thirty-five years of hiding in Buffalo, New York, aged Jewish mobster David "Noodles" Aaronson is forced to confront his past as he searches for the mysterious person who tracked him down. The bodies of three of his former friends were moved from a Jewish cemetery, which is dug up to make room for a new building complex, to a crypt in another cemetary. He received an invitation from a strange Secretary of Commerce Christopher Bailey to a party. In order to find the answers as to who sent for him and why, he must look back into his painful boyhood and young adult years.

The 1920's childhood sequence, widely hailed as the greatest of the movie's "sections", shows young Noodles' (Scott Tiler) struggles as a poor street punk in the Jewish ghetto of Brooklyn. His gang consists of Patrick "Patsy" Goldberg (Brian Bloom), Phillip "Cockeye" Stein (Adrian Curran), who plays a small pan pipe throughout the film, and Dominic (Noah Mozelli). They nominally work for local hoodlum Bugsy (James Russo), who has a gang of his own. The scenes deal with Noodles and his gang as they first meet Max Bercovitz (Rusty Jacobs) and become an independent operation under his and Noodles' leadership, the establishment of the gang funds (the suitcase in the train station locker which later becomes a crucial plot piece), and Noodles' fruitless flirtation with Deborah Gelly (Jennifer Connelly), a local girl who aspires to be a dancer and actress. The sequence ultimately ends in tragedy as Bugsy, furious over the boys' becoming independent of him, shoots Dominic in front of his friends. Noodles retaliates by stabbing Bugsy to death with a switchblade, along with a police officer who intervenes, and he is sent to jail for nearly nine years. Max, now in charge with Noodles' absence, is left alone on the outside with the group.

Now a young man, Noodles is released from jail in 1932 (played now by De Niro) and quickly becomes reacquainted with his old gang: Max (James Woods), Patsy (James Hayden) and Cockeye (William Forsythe), who are now major players in the bootlegging industry during the waning days of Prohibition. After briefly reuniting with other acquaintances (Deborah - Elizabeth McGovern), Deborah's brother Fat Moe (Larry Rapp), who runs the speakeasy, and Peggy (Amy Ryder) - Patsy's girlfriend - the gang is recruited by the Minaldi brothers to steal a shipment of diamonds from an insurance dealer and deliver them to Joe. During the robbery, we are introduced to Carol (Tuesday Weld), the jeweler's secretary, who is later to become Max's girlfriend; she's established as a masochist, and Noodles rapes her in this scene. During an exchange at an abandoned dockyard, Joe Minaldi (Young) and his henchmen are gunned down in a surprise hit by the gang; Frankie (Pesci) has arranged the hit to eliminate Joe. Noodles expresses his misgivings at working for the mob, but ultimately drops the subject.

The gang quickly becomes more deeply involved in Mafia matters, including directly intervening in a steel workers' strike on the side of union boss Jimmy Conway O'Donnell (Treat Williams), protecting him against a steel tycoon and his hired thugs, and ultimately destroying the latter. The crew also deals with the corrupt Police Chief Aiello (Danny Aiello), who is being paid off by the steel company, by switching the Chief's newborn son in the hospital with several others. Not long after, Carol becomes reacquainted with the gang and falls in love with Max; Noodles goes on a extravagant date with Deborah and, after being rejected by her, rapes her in the backseat of their limousine. After this, Max drives the gang in even deeper with the Mafia, union, and politics. Max is very willing and eager to advance his gang's position, but Noodles still expresses deep misgivings about what they are doing. After Prohibition is repealed in 1933, Noodles balks when Max suggests that they launch a robbery of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, realizing that it would be a suicidal gesture. Noodles is convinced by Carol to tip off the police about a planned liquor run. After an anonymous phone call, Max, Patsy, and Cockeye are all killed in a shootout with the police. Noodles' girlfriend Eve is killed by enraged gangsters over his betrayal, and Fat Moe is nearly beaten to death under interrogation. Having hiding in an opium den, Noodles barely escapes his pursuers and makes his way to the gang's money hoard, which they all agreed as boys belongs to all of them. However, he is shocked to discover the money is missing, and he is forced to flee to Buffalo and live as Robert Williams.

In the 1968 sequences, Noodles learns from an elderly Carol that Deborah has become a famous actress. Upon meeting with her after a play, he reconciles with her over the rape that ended their relationship, and she confesses to him that she has been living with the mysterious Bailey for years. He is shocked to learn that her grown son David bears a striking resemblance to Max. It is then revealed that Max survived the shootout, faked his death with help from the Syndicate, and had taken on the identity of Secretary Bailey. Bailey is under investigation for claims of corruption, and has hired Noodles to assassinate him - allowing Noodles to obtain his revenge on Max. Not wanting to kill another person, Noodles simply refuses, and Bailey (or at least someone like him) steps into the back of a garbage truck and kills himself. The closing scene involves a flashback to a young Noodles smiling in an opium den in 1933, implying that he is relieved to be free of Max and the criminal life.

[edit] Novel

[edit] The Hoods

The film was inspired by an autobiographical novel called The Hoods, written by Harry Grey (a pseudonym), a former gangster-turned informant. The novel itself depicts only the first two-thirds of the movie's chronology. The "contemporary" scenes (which many believe to be a prolonged dream/fantasy sequence) were entirely the work of Leone. The plot is otherwise faithful to the original book, though the rape scenes were not present in the novel, and several character names were very different.

Another major difference is that the original novel featured several historical mob figures (mostly in cameos), including Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel, to name a few. Leone edited out these characters because he felt they distracted from the overall storyline. The Mafia (or "Combination" as it is referred to in the book and movie) is represented in the final cut of the film by a brief appearance by the fictional Minaldi Brothers, Frank and Joe, played by Joe Pesci and Burt Young, respectively, and their henchmen. There were also a few references to various real gangster anecdotes sown liberally throughout the film. The character of Noodles is based loosely on Meyer Lansky, and Max on Bugsy Siegel (Max's reactions to Noodles's calling him "crazy" is taken directly from Siegel's real-life reactions to his nickname), and several of the hits and acts of violence were based on photographs of real incidents, such as the hit on Joe Minaldi, which was based on Bugsy Siegel's death.

Leone had wanted to make the film since before The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but he had great difficulty in securing the rights to the novel, and in arranging a meeting with its reclusive author. He turned down an offer to direct The Godfather in order to pursue his pet project. Grey finally met with Leone several times in the '60s and '70s, and was a fan of Leone's Westerns; before his death in 1982, he ultimately agreed to the adaptation. Part of the reason why the production took so long was that another producer had the rights to the novel and refused to relinquish them until the late 1970s.

Leone considered many actors for the film's various parts. He was particularly enthusiastic about Gérard Depardieu, who offered to learn English with a New York accent if cast as Noodles in the film. Richard Dreyfuss was also an early consideration for Max, and Tom Berenger and Dustin Hoffman were also considered for Max and Noodles. Leone also tried, as he had with A Fistful of Dynamite, to produce the film with a younger director under him. In the early days of the project he courted John Milius, a fan of his who was enthusiastic about the idea; but Milius was working on The Wind and the Lion and the script for Apocalypse Now, and could not commit to the project.

For the film's visual appearance Leone used as references the paintings of such artists as Reginald Marsh, Edward Hopper, and Norman Rockwell, as well as (for the 1922 sequences) the photographs of Jacob Riis. F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel The Great Gatsby also influenced the characterization of Noodles (or at least his relationship with Deborah).

[edit] "Opium Theory"

The movie begins and ends in 1933, with Noodles hiding out in an opium den from Syndicate hitmen. Since the last shot of the movie is of Noodles in a smiling, opium-soaked high, some (as mentioned above) interpret the film to have been a drug-induced fantasy or dream, with Noodles remembering his past and envisioning the future. In his commentary for the DVD, film historian and critic Richard Schickel states that opium users often report vivid dreams and that these visions have a tendency to explore the user's past and future. On the documentary "A Fistful of Sergio Leone", it is reported that Leone himself hinted at this theory as a possibility to a cinemagoer who had just seen the movie.

When considering the reality of the ending, one must note that the 1968 sequences include several anachronisms - music from The Beatles (see below), television, and references to the Vietnam War - that did not exist in 1933, and that Noodles would thus not be able to envision such things. Furthermore, it can be argued that to dub the later scenes a dream would remove the entire thematic and psychological point of the film that Leone had intended.

It is believed that the final scene with Noodles leaving the mansion supports the dream hypothesis. The movie begins with a rendition of 'God Bless America' and in the corresponding end scene has people riding in 1930s-era cars singing the same song. Bailey's betrayal in the future can be interpreted as a transference of guilt. Noodles subconsciously blames Bailey for his entry into organized crime and his failed relationship with Deborah, and, in a way, he feels betrayed by Max's burgeoning ambition. Also -- consistently with Leone's greater project of capturing America's spirit -- the inclusion of historical references entails that in the film's fictional universe, such history of America is indeed a 1930s mobster's solipsist pipe dream; this is a way to make a point that contemporary history of America is like some 1930s mobster's pipe dream. ^[1] Also, the fact that Deborah still seems beautiful and not aged much by time could be a hint for this theory, because she is the love of his life and therefore stays some sort of ageless beauty.

[edit] Alternate versions

[edit] Unfilmed title scene

Originally, the transition from 1933 to 1968 was to be much more elaborate, but finally the scene simply proved to be too difficult. From the original shooting script:

"We hear the roar of the its wheels and the wail of a train's whistle, and the view across the tracks is blocked by the engine, the tender and the cars - car after car laden with Model T's or whatever Ford was turning out in 1933... The train keeps passing, but the cars are no longer laden with 1933 Fords. They've become 1968 models in pink and turquoise and emerald green, announced by a title that fills the screen: ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. The train disappears, taking its rattle with it, and the barriers rise. But we are no longer staring out over open countryside. We see instead an endless row of high-rises, a cement City of Oz. Heading the row of cars that face us at the crossing is a 1960 Chevy. The [driver] is in his sixties too... Noodles, forty years later."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Deleted scenes

The original shooting-script, completed in October 1981, was 317 pages in length. At the end of filming, Leone had about 8 to 10 hours worth of footage. With his editor, Nino Baragli, Leone trimmed this down to about almost 6 hours, and he orginally wanted to release the film in two movies with three-hour parts. The producers refused (partly due to the commercial and critical failure of Bertolucci's two-part Novecento) and Leone was forced to further shorten the length of his film, resulting in a completed (i.e. scored, dubbed, edited, etc.) film of 229 minutes.

Leone has said that ideally, he would have liked the film to be "between four hours ten minutes and four hours twenty-five minutes" (250 minutes to 265 minutes), and that such a cut would mainly have served to restore scenes developing Noodles' relationships with women.

Important scenes which failed to appear in the 144 minute cut:

• A brief scene in the 1921 sequences, showing local ganglord Bugsy (James Russo) and his gang being arrested by the police for bootlegging while Noodles and his gang looked on. This would occur right before the gang's meeting with the Capuano Brothers at the harbor. The main importance of this scene would be to establish why Noodles' gang is working with the Capuanos. Dialogue from that scene indicates that Bugsy had been working with them, but since he and his thugs have now been jailed, Noodles and Co. have taken over his old job.
• Secretary Bailey arguing with an older Jimmy O'Donnell about a pension scam, just before Noodle's climactic meeting with the former.
• An opium-induced flashback of Noodles and the gang as children.
• Noodles' first meeting with Eve (Darlanne Fluegel), and many other minor scenes with Eve. In the original shooting script, this occurs after his rape of Deborah (which happens at night, rather than early morning). A very drunk Noodles meets Eve in a speakeasy and goes to bed with her, calling her 'Deborah'.
• Scenes of Noodles watching Deborah performing a Busby Berkely musical scene at a nightclub, just before their date, as well as scenes from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. (The DVD's picture gallery feature includes an image of Elizabeth McGovern dressed as Cleopatra and holding a snake.)
• A scene of Noodles talking to the limousine driver before the date with Deborah. There is clear enmity between the two characters, highlighting the way in which Jewish gangsters are perceived by fellow Jews. The reason that this scene was cut was because producer Arnon Milchan, who played the chauffeur, felt that he should not have had such a noticeable role in the movie, and he did not want people to make a big deal out of his cameo.
• A long scene involving Police Chief Aiello (Danny Aiello) and his involvement with the strike breakers. (Some of the scene's dialogue was reworked into the brief interview with Aiello on the steps of the police station in the final version.) As a follow-up to this, a scene where the gang plans the famous baby-snatching scene with crooked politician Sharkey (Robert Harper) was also shot. Noodles wants to kill Aiello, but is convinced not to by Max and Sharkey.
• A brief scene during Noodles, Max, Carol, and Eve's vacation to Florida, where a lifeguard, having heard of the repeal of Prohibition, digs up a bottle of liquor from the beach and drinks it thirstily.
• An older Carol (Tuesday Weld) revealing to Noodles that Max had syphilis. In the original shooting script, this scene (set between the beach scene described above, and Carol and Noodles' scene outside the Federal Reserve) also has Carol revealing the details of Eve's death to Noodles: "Oh, how she waited, but you never showed up... She shut the windows and locked the door, and nobody bothered to check. She was in there all the time, with her little capsules...there was nobody at the funeral but me." (The latter part of this scene may never have even been filmed, since Eve's death, which consists of her getting murdered in the film's opening, is depicted very differently in the final film.)

These scenes were said to be all shot, and it is unknown if they still exist.

[edit] Film versions

Similarly, many people (including film critic Richard Schickel, who records the film's DVD commentary) assume that the flying disc scene was part of a longer sequence. ^[2] While the first shooting script placed much more emphasis on the union subplot, this was very heavily trimmed in the revised version. Thus, there are not nearly as many union-related deleted scenes as many people believe. Note: PAL editions of the DVD have a running time of 219 minutes (and 48 seconds). This is due entirely to PAL speed-up. One persistent change involved the young Noodles spying on a nude young Deborah, given that Jennifer Connelly was 14 years old at the time of filming; however, a woman named Margherita Pace was credited as young Connelly's body double ^[3].

There are three abridged versions of the film, none of which are currently available:

• The 227 minute version - When the 'complete' film was shown in America, it still had to be trimmed slightly to secure an 'R' rating. Cuts were made to the two rape scenes, and some of the violence at the beginning.
• A network television version of three hours (without commercials) was briefly available in the early-to-mid-1990s, which retained the film's non-chronological order but still left out several key scenes. This version has recently turned up in viewings of the film for the AMC TV channel.
• The infamous 144 minute American version was the version given wide release in America. Heavily cut by the Ladd Company against Leone's wishes, the film's story was rearranged in chronological order, which made no sense and had the effect of making it even more difficult to follow. Most of the major cuts involved the childhood sequences, making the 1933 sections the most prominent part of the film. Noodles' 1968 meeting with Deborah was excised, and the scene with "Secretary Bailey" ended with him shooting himself (albeit offscreen), rather than the famous garbage truck conclusion of the 229-minute version. This version flopped in the US and many American critics, who knew about Leone's original cut, attacked the short version viciously. Some critics compared shortening the film to shortening Richard Wagner's operas (some of which run over 5 hours), saying that works of art that are meant to be long should be given the respect they deserve. However, the original 229-minute cut has been restored and the shortened version, while briefly on VHS in the 1980s, is in little demand and almost impossible to find.

In the Soviet Union, the film was theatrically shown in the late 1980s, along with other Hollywood blockbusters such as the two King Kong movies. The story was rearranged in chronological order and the movie was split in two parts, one containing all childhood scenes and the other for adulthood scenes. The parts were run as two separate movies.^[4] Except the rearrangement, no major deletions were made, and the film was rated as "16+" by the Goskino. This version has never made it on the Russian TV; the full PAL version was shown and is available on DVD.

[edit] DVD releases

The film was released in the late '90s on a poor quality, pan-and-scan release with no special features aside from the original trailer and brief cast listing. The two-disc special edition was released on DVD in June 2003 and was a bestseller on Amazon.com for several weeks. The result has been hailed as having excellent image quality, partly due to the high bitrate, which places the release on a level with most superbit DVDs.

However, it has been criticized for its limited extras and the fact that, being spread out on two double-layer disks, disc one ends very abruptly, during an action sequence. More importantly, it has also been strongly criticized for not including the original mono soundtrack. According to those who were in attendance, this is how the film ran at its Cannes premiere; the first half of the film ended as it does on DVD. The VHS two-tape edition of the film cuts after Noodles drove the car into the river. After this, an end of part 1 title card appeared on screen. The film’s 'Intermission' does not occur until 40 minutes into disc two, so it is argued that placing the break later would have meant compressing disc one far more heavily.

[edit] Soundtrack

The music was composed by Leone's long-time collaborator, Ennio Morricone. Due to the film's unusually long gestation, Morricone had finished composing most of the soundtrack before many scenes had even been filmed. Some of Morricone's pieces were actually played on set as filming took place (a technique that Leone had used for Once Upon a Time in the West. "Deborah's Theme", considered by many to be the best piece of this soundtrack, was in fact originally written for another film in the 1970s but rejected; Morricone presented the piece to Leone, who was initially reluctant, considering it too similar to Morricone's main title for Once Upon a Time in the West.

Track listing:

1. Once Upon a Time in America
2. Poverty
3. Deborah's Theme
4. Childhood Memories
5. Amapola
6. Friends
7. Prohibition Dirge
8. Cockeye's Song
9. Amapola, Pt. 2
10. Childhood Poverty
11. Photographic Memories
12. Friends
13. Friendship & Love
14. Speakeasy
15. Deborah's Theme-Amapola
16. Suite from Once Upon a Time in America (Includes Amapola) [#]
17. Poverty [Temp. Version][#]
18. Unused Theme [#]
19. Unused Theme [Version 2][#]

Besides the original music, the movie also used several pieces of "found" music, including:

• "God Bless America" (written by Irving Berlin, performed by Kate Smith - 1943) - Plays over the opening credits from a radio in Eve's bedroom. (Incidentally, the recording of the song used was not sung until 1943, for the film This is the Army, so its use is a slight anachronism on Leone's part.)
• "Yesterday" (written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney - 1965) - A muzak version of this piece plays when Noodles first returns to New York in 1968, examining himself in a train station mirror. An instrumental version of the song also plays briefly during the dialogue scene between Noodles and "Bailey" towards the end of the film.
• "Amapola" (written by Joseph LaCalle (American lyrics by Albert Gamse) - 1923) - Originally an opera piece, several instrumental versions of this song were played during the film; a jazzy version which played on the gramophone danced to by young Deborah in 1922; a similar version played by Fat Moe's jazz band in the speakeasy in 1932; and a string version, during Noodles' date with Deborah. (It has been suggested that Leone used this piece after seeing a version of it in the film Carnal Knowledge, though this has not been confirmed.) Both versions are available on the soundtrack.
• "The Thieving Magpie (Overture)" (Gioacchino Rossini - 1817) - Used during the baby-switching scene in the hospital.
• "Summertime" (George Gershwin - 1935) - Played by a jazz band during the beach scene after the beachgoers receive word of Prohibition's repeal. (This song post-dates the events of the film by two/three years, so like the version of "God Bless America" used in the film's opening, it's a slight but understandable anachronism.)
• "Night and Day" (written and sung by Cole Porter - 1932) - Plays during Secretary Bailey's party in 1968.

Once Upon a Time in America is widely regarded as Morricone's best work, but was disqualified, on a technicality, from Oscar consideration.^[5] In the original American print, Morricone's name was accidentally left off of the opening credits by the producers.

[edit] Awards and Nominations

British Academy of Film and Television Arts

• Best Costume Design- Gabriella Pescucci "Won"

• Best Score- Ennio Morricone "Won"

• Best Director- Sergio Leone

• Best Supporting Actress- Tuesday Weld

Golden Globes

• Best Director- Sergio Leone

• Best Original Score- Ennio Morricone

Los Angeles Films Critics Assocation

• Best Music- Ennio Morricone

[edit] Reception and legacy

The film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival was an astounding success.^{[citation needed]} Some female audience members were offended by the rape scenes and depiction of women (Leone was often accused of misogyny based on his films' portrayal of women).^{[citation needed]} The film was extremely successful,^{[citation needed]} garnering a fifteen-minute standing ovation from the audience.^{[citation needed]} The uncut European version of the film won rave reviews,^{[citation needed]} and was very successful throughout Europe and abroad.^{[citation needed]} However, several sneak premieres in Canada and the US gained a mixed reception at best (some suspect due to studio tampering). The film was drastically edited, as mentioned above, more for commercial reasons than anything else. Leone, who had turned down an offer to make The Godfather twelve years earlier, was indignant when several American critics compared the butchered version of his film to "a Jewish Godfather". The 144-minute version was a huge flop and American critics destroyed it. Roger Ebert wrote in his 1984 review that the uncut version was "an epic poem of violence and greed" but described the American theatrical version as a "travesty".^[6]

The uncut version of the film gained widespread critical acclaim and a large following.^{[citation needed]} James Woods, who considers Once Upon a Time in America Leone's finest work, mentions in the DVD documentary that one critic dubbed the film the worst of 1984, only to see the original cut years later and call it the best of the 1980s. Ebert, in his review of Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, called the original uncut version of Once Upon a Time in America the best film depicting the Prohibition era.^[7] Sight and Sound magazine placed it among the ten best films of the last 25 years when it attempted to do a poll on recent films.^{[citation needed]} It also ranks among the top 250 films as voted by the Internet Movie Database users^[8].

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Aboutfilm.com's in depth analysis of the film
• Fistful-of-leone.com
• Brief article and picture on a Louise Fletcher fanpage, discussing one of the deleted scenes
• Once Upon a Time in America at the Internet Movie Database
• Roger Ebert's 1984 Review
• A site dedicated to the film

v • d • e Films directed by Sergio Leone Il Colosso di Rodi • A Fistful of Dollars • For a Few Dollars More • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly • Once Upon a Time in the West • A Fistful of Dynamite • Once Upon a Time in America