Leone's Esstential Swan-Song...

Rating: 10/10 (4 February 2006)

Once Upon a Time in America (1984) Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Tuesday Weld, Treat Williams, William Forsythe, James Hayden, Danny Aiello, Larry Rapp, Burt Young, Joe Pesci, Scott Tiler, Jennifer Connelly, Rusty Jacobs.
Spoilers herein.
At the start of the 80's decade, cinema had already gotten a strong start for making great films. Surrounded by tons of mindless and idiotic films from the Comedy and Horror genre that nearly ruined the decade, films like Raging Bull (my favorite of the 1980's), The Empire Strikes Back, Ordinary People and The Elephant Man were some of the best to come out of 1980. Throughout the years, others like Platoon, Rain Man, and Do the Right Thing have been hailed as some of the best of the decade. With one of the best films that has ever been brought to the screen, Once Upon a Time in America, has been constantly ignored and forgotten.
Like Midnight Cowboy, The Wild Bunch, and A Clockwork Orange, Once Upon a Time in America is a turning point in its genre. It's the only film that I've seen that captures the atmosphere and tells the story so differently from others. Sergio Leone's final film, Once Upon a Time in America is actually one of the hardest films I've ever critiqued. It is all around astonishing in the sense that the film is extremely well made by Leone, in the longest film of his career.
The story begins as a mystery, with several men on the search for Noodles, a Jewish gangster on the run from the men for ratting out his "friends". As he escapes the city, we forward to thirty-five years later to him as a senior. There, he comes back to visit a friend and look back on the regrets from his past, from his childhood to him as a younger adult, where he and his best friends rise together in the mob ranks.
Leone, a perfectionist, took many years to write the screenplay. He went through script changes and re-writes many times, and never could get it exactly as he wanted it. When he was finally finished, he acted the film out himself. Objectively, Once Upon a Time in America is possibly the greatest gangster film I've ever seen along with The Godfather and Goodfellas. And it is that reason why I give him credit for giving one of the best directions in a film. His techniques obviously inspired Tarantino to go on making Pulp Fiction, and somewhat even for Martin Scorsese with Goodfellas.
Leone is probably most famous for making films such as the Dollars trilogy (Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and Once Upon a Time in the West. Here, he uses a similar storytelling like "West" did, except here it is far more personal into the depths of the characters. The cast is fantastic. De Niro seems rather different in this role, but is still very good. James Woods, Tuesday Weld and Elizabeth McGovern give their best roles to date.
A 139-minute version was brought to the United States for a theatrical release, and was found disappointing by many critics and Leone fans in general. This version showed the film in chronological order, with many important (if intense) character pieces cut out. Ennio Morricone's (who also did the score for the Dollars trilogy) musical score is among his greatest. It is performed in haunting and beautiful ways, and it perfectly matches the film.
The scenes with De Niro's behavior toward women are the ones that give the film a disturbing feel. The scenes with rape may offend some, but you have to understand why he does it before you can go on with the film. I think he did it because he never grew up learning how to treat a woman with love, and after raping the woman who he did love, he looks at the ground with guilt, and wondering to himself, what had he done wrong? Also, the character development in the film is horribly unappreciated. This is a film I just adored from the very beginning- one to expand my imagination on the characters as I did in Cinema Paradiso and City of God.
I won't lie. The content in Once Upon a Time in America is extremely brutal. There are several scenes with shootings, beatings, stabbings- some even involving kids. If you can endure violence and some language- great acting, amazing directing, terrific writing, stunning cinematography, beautiful music. What more could you ask for in a great film? In the end, I would call it the greatest film of the 1980's along with Raging Bull and The Empire Strikes Back. It is an incredible cinematic masterpiece that's greatness within every year that passes. This is Leone's greatest, and sadly last, film. 5 stars out of 5.