Once Upon A Time In America

This is part of my presentation of my Top Five favorite movies (in no particular order).

Last night, I watched one of my favorite movies and was reminded once again just how great a film Once Upon A Time In America really is.

Once Upon a Time in America (Italian: C’era una volta in America) is a 1984 epic crime drama film co-written and directed by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. The film is an Italian–American venture produced by The Ladd Company, Embassy International Pictures, PSO Enterprises, and Rafran Cinematografica, and distributed by Warner Bros. Based on Harry Grey’s novel The Hoods, it chronicles the lives of best friends David “Noodles” Aaronson and Maximilian “Max” Bercovicz as they lead a group of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence as Jewish gangsters in the world of organized crime in New York City. The film explores themes of childhood friendships, love, lust, greed, betrayal, loss, broken relationships, together with the rise of mobsters in American society.

Here is a summary of the plot (SUPER SPOILER ALERT):

Three thugs enter a Chinese wayang theater, looking for a marked man. The proprietors slip into a hidden opium den and warn a man named “Noodles”, but he pays no attention. In a flashback, Noodles observes police removing three disfigured corpses from a street. Although he kills one of the thugs pursuing him, Noodles learns they have murdered Eve, his girlfriend, and that his money has been stolen, so he leaves the city.

David “Noodles” Aaronson struggles as a street kid in a neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1918. He and his friends Patrick “Patsy” Goldberg, Philip “Cockeye” Stein and Dominic commit petty crimes under the supervision of local boss, Bugsy. Planning to rob a drunk as a truck hides them from a police officer, they’re foiled by the slightly older Maximillian “Max” Bercovicz, who jumps off the truck to rob the man himself. Noodles confronts Max, but a crooked police officer steals the watch that they are fighting over. Later, Max blackmails the police officer, who is having sex with Peggy, a teenage girl and Noodles’ neighbor. Max, Noodles, Patsy, Dominic and Cockeye start their own gang, independent of Bugsy, who had previously enjoyed the police officer’s protection.

The boys stash half their money in a suitcase, which they hide in a locker at the railway station, giving the key to Fat Moe, a reliable friend who is not part of the operation. Noodles is in love with Fat Moe’s sister, Deborah, who aspires to be a dancer and actress. After the gang has some success, Bugsy ambushes the boys and shoots Dominic, who dies in Noodles’ arms. In a rage, Noodles stabs Bugsy and severely injures a police officer. He is arrested and sentenced to prison.

Noodles is released from jail in 1930 and is reunited with his old gang, who are now major bootleggers during Prohibition. Noodles also reunites with Deborah, seeking to rekindle their relationship. During a robbery, the gang meet Carol, who later on becomes Max’s girlfriend. The gang prospers from bootlegging, while also providing muscle for union boss Jimmy Conway O’Donnell.

Noodles tries to impress Deborah on an extravagant date, but then rapes her after she declines his marriage proposal, as she intends to pursue a career in Hollywood. Noodles goes to the train station looking for Deborah, but when she spots him from her train seat, she simply closes the blind.

The gang’s financial success ends with the 1933 repeal of Prohibition. Max suggests joining the Teamsters’ union, as muscle, but Noodles refuses. Max acquiesces and they go to Florida, with Carol and Eve, for a vacation. While there, Max suggests robbing the New York Federal Reserve Bank, but Noodles regards it as a suicide mission.

Carol, who also fears for Max’s life, convinces Noodles to inform the police about a lesser offense, so the four friends will safely serve a brief (“probably one year”) jail sentence. Minutes after calling the police, Max knocks Noodles unconscious during an argument. Regaining consciousness, Noodles finds out that Max, Patsy, and Cockeye have been killed by the police, and is consumed with guilt over making the phone call. Noodles then boards the first bus leaving New York, going to Buffalo, to live under a false identity, Robert Williams.

In 1968, Noodles receives a letter informing him that the cemetery where his friends are buried is being redeveloped, asking him to make arrangements for their reburial. Realizing that someone has deduced his identity, Noodles returns to Manhattan, and stays with Fat Moe above his restaurant. While visiting the cemetery, Noodles finds a key to the railway locker once kept by the gang, and notes the license plate of a car following him. Opening the locker, he finds a suitcase full of money but with a note stating that the cash is a down-payment on his next job.

Noodles hears about a corruption scandal and assassination attempt on U.S. Secretary of Commerce Christopher Bailey, an embattled political figure, mentioned in a news report.

Noodles visits Carol, who lives at a retirement home run by the Bailey Foundation. She tells him that Max planted the idea of Carol and Noodles tipping him off to the police, because he wanted to die rather than go insane like his father, who died in an asylum; Max opened fire on the police to ensure his own death.

While at the retirement home, Noodles sees a photo of Deborah at the institution’s dedication. Noodles tracks down Deborah, still an actress. He questions her about Secretary Bailey, telling her about his invitation to a party at Bailey’s mansion. Deborah claims not to know who Bailey is and begs Noodles to leave via the back exit, as Bailey’s son is waiting for her at the main door. Ignoring Deborah’s advice, Noodles sees Bailey’s son David, who is named after Noodles and bears a strong resemblance to Max as a young man. Thus, Noodles realizes that Max is alive and living as Bailey.

Noodles meets with Max in his private study during the party. Max explains that corrupt police officers helped him fake his own death, so that he could steal the gang’s money and Noodles’ love interest, Deborah, in order to begin a new life as Bailey, a man with connections to the Teamsters’ union, connections that have now gone sour.

Now faced with ruin and the specter of a Teamster assassination, Max asks Noodles to kill him, having tracked him down and sent the invitation. Noodles, obstinately referring to him by his Secretary Bailey identity, refuses because, in his eyes, Max died with the gang. As Noodles leaves Max’s estate, he hears a garbage truck start up and looks back to see Max standing at his driveway’s gated entrance. As he begins to walk towards Noodles, the truck passes between them. Noodles sees the truck’s auger grinding down rubbish, but Max is nowhere to be seen.

The end returns to the opening scene in 1933, with Noodles entering the opium den after his friends’ deaths, taking the drug and broadly grinning.

It was the final film directed by Leone before his death five years later, and the first feature film he had directed in over a decade. It is also the third film of Leone’s Once Upon a Time Trilogy, which includes Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and Duck, You Sucker! (1971). The cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli, and the film score by Ennio Morricone. Leone originally envisaged two three-hour films, then a single 4 hour and 29 minute version, but was convinced by distributors to shorten it to 3 hours and 49 minutes. The American distributors, The Ladd Company, further shortened it to 139 minutes, and rearranged the scenes into chronological order, without Leone’s involvement. The shortened version was a critical and commercial flop in the United States, and critics who had seen both versions harshly condemned the changes that were made. The original “European cut” has remained a critical favorite and frequently appears in lists of the greatest gangster films of all time.

The initial critical response to Once Upon a Time in America was mixed, because of the different versions released worldwide. While internationally the film was well received in its original form, American critics were much more dissatisfied with the 139-minute version released in North America. This condensed version was a critical and financial disaster, and many American critics who knew of Leone’s original cut attacked the short version. Some critics compared shortening the film to shortening Richard Wagner’s operas, saying that works of art that are meant to be long should be given the respect they deserve. 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”. Ebert’s television film critic partner Gene Siskel considered the uncut version to be the best film of 1984 and the shortened, linear studio version to be the worst film of 1984.

It was only after Leone’s death and the subsequent restoration of the original version that critics began to give it the kind of praise displayed at its original Cannes showing. By most accounts, the uncut original film is considered to be far superior to the edited version released in the US in 1984. Ebert, in his review of Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, called the original uncut version of Once Upon a Time in America the best film depicting the Prohibition era. James Woods, who considers it to be Leone’s finest film, mentioned 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.

If you have never seen this film, please give it a watch (in its full length version). You are sure to come away with a lot of questions and perhaps a few insights into your own life. There will be some confusion: Is the whole film a flashback and a drug induced dream or artfully presented reality? What do you make of Max’s disappearance at the end? A lot is open for interpretation. However, if you do not begin to cry as Deborah removes her Cleopatra makeup, you probably have missed most of the movie’s salient points.

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