A Great Cinematic Experience And Masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (10 November 2011)

Once Upon a Time in America is an Italian epic crime film co-written and directed by Sergio Leone.It stars Robert De Niro and James Woods together with Elizabeth McGovern,William Forsythe,James Hayden,Tuesday Weld,Treat Williams,Joe Pesci,Burt Young and Brian Bloom. The film chronicles the story of the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime. It explores themes of childhood friendships, love, lust, greed, betrayal, loss, broken relationships, and the rise of mobsters in American society.Leone adapted the story from the novel The Hoods, written by Harry Grey, while filming Once Upon a Time in the West. From there, Leone began production of Once Upon a Time in America.
Once Upon a Time in America is done in non-linear order. While this plot states the film from the 20's to the 60's the film is largely told through flashbacks from the 60's.Spanning four decades, the film tells the story of David "Noodles" Aaronson and his Jewish pals, chronicling their childhoods on New York's Lower East Side in the 1920s, through their gangster careers in the 1930s, and culminating in Noodles' 1968 return to New York from self-imposed exile, at which time he learns the truth about the fate of his friends and again confronts the nightmare of his past. The acting, the re-creation of the time period, the cinematography, and the music are all superb. However, even more important is Leone's ability to make the film work on so many different levels: it's both a criticism of gangster-film mythology and a continuation of the director's exploration of the issues of time and history. Strange as it may seem, the violence and gore in the first half of the film turn into a sad elegy about wasted lives and lost love.
Once Upon a Time in America is visually stunning, stylistically bold, and emotionally haunting.Also,it is filled with great performances from its cast especially Robert De Niro,Tuesday Weld and James Woods.Obviously,Sergio Leone created a cinema masterpiece that is a self-reflexive crime-gangster epic that glorifies its lifestyle.Also,it has many wonderful, memorable moments in the movie that it conveys a lifetime of experience as it unfolds.
Overall,Once Upon a Time in America is a cinema experience that one should have when viewing this undisputed masterpiece.