Once Upon a Time in America. The extended version features 22-minutes of additional footage, bringing the runtime to 251 minutes, and was supervised by the film's original sound editor, Fausto Ancillai. The Extended Director's Cut makes its U.S. Blu-ray debut on September 30th.



Synopsis: Spanning four decades, Sergio Leone's final film tells the story of David "Noodles" Aaronson (Robert De Niro) 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. Leone's film is both a criticism of gangster-film mythology and a continuation of the director's exploration of the issues of time and history, while the violence and gore that frequent the first half of the film turn into a sad elegy about wasted lives and lost love.



The new Collector's Edition contains a new 32-page book with rare photos and insightful notes that chronicle the movie's production history. The book also includes a letter written by Martin Scorsese. He noted, "At long last, materials for some of these missing sections have been found and re-inserted into the picture under the supervision of Leone's family and surviving collaborators. The work has been completed by the magnificent team at Cineteca di Bologna and L'Immagine Ritrovata, with generous funding from Gucci, and it has been wonderful to witness this enlargement of Leone's vision, step by precious step."



The Extended Director's Cut is being released via two editions: a 2-disc Extended Director's Cut Collector's Edition, which contains the Extended Director's Cut, the 1984 theatrical edition, Digital HD with UltraViolet, plus the 32-page book with rare photos and chronicles of the movie's production; and a single-disc standard edition.



Special features include:

Commentary by Film Historian and Critic Richard Schickel

Making-of Documentary - Once Upon a Time: Sergio Leone









