My favourite film of all time.....

Rating: Null/10 (27 June 2003)

Once Upon A Time In America is my favourite film, bar none of all time.. This picture is, in my opinion, Sergio Leone's finest achievement -his masterpiece. The movie can be viewed in several different ways and on quite a few different levels. For what it's worth these are my thoughts: This is the second loose trilogy that Leone made (The first being the Dollars trilogy - A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly)**The second trilogy being Once Upon a Time in The West( The building of the railroad between the East and West coasts of America ) A Fistful of Dynamite or Duck You Sucker or as it was called in France, Once Upon A Time The Revolution ( the Mexican Revolution ) and finally Once Upon A Time In America ( the Prohibition Era of 1920's and 1930's America.) These were in Leone's opinion the 3 most important periods in the history of the U.S. The film starts and ends in 1933 - although goes forward to 1968 and then back to 1923 - then back and forth throughout the story. Time is the most important character as the story unfolds. It is a fairy tale for adults...if you want the film can be viewed an an opium dream in Noodles' (Robert De Niro's) mind. If the film is looked at in this light, the fact that Elizabeth McGovern's character does not seem to age between 1933 and 1968 makes more sense. Another clue to the film's use of dream imagery is that the number 35 appears on the garbage truck at the end of the film (This is the number of years that Noodles was hiding out and spending the intervening years between 1933 and 1968.) Also when Noodles first returns to New York's Lower East Side and meets Fat Moe (Larry Rapp)-he gives him back the key to Moe's clock. This is then used to wind up the clock (and start time moving again so that the rest of the story can be told) In many ways the film is only told from Noodles viewpoint...we only find out that during his 35 years in hiding he was "..going to bed early.." Ennio Morricone's music score is haunting - about 2/3 of the music was composed prior to the film being shot - and, as was common on a lot of Leone's film shoots -the score was played while the actors were making the film - in one early 1923 sequence 'Dominic' is heard and seen whistling one of the main themes from the picture (Another use of dream imagery in this film) The use of flashbacks in many of Leone's films is important to the storyline - this film is almost entirely made up of flashbacks and flash forwards. It rewards repeated viewings and never fails to amaze me with its detail and sweep and scope.