Starring: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Burt Young, James Hayden, William Forsythe, Danny Aiello, Treat Williams and Tuesday Wield

Director: Sergio Leone

Synopsis: “Noodles” (De Niro), is an elderly ex-gangster who in his youth took advantage of Prohibition and a great deal more alongside his friends. Returning to New York after years of hiding, he takes stock of his life as he confronts his past and also his future.

Based on Harry Grey’s novel, “The Hoods”, Once Upon a Time in America is the last film Sergio Leone would ever make, released five years before his death and thirteen years after A Fistful of Dynamite, or in this instance better referred to as Once Upon a Time… The Revolution, seeing as Leone visualised this as the finale of his Once Upon a Time trilogy. Leone had conquered and revolutionised the Spaghetti Western long before his 1968 film, and his 1971 Zapata Western focusing on the Mexican Revolution wasn’t half bad itself, but after turning down the opportunity to direct The Godfather, Leone began a lengthy ten year journey to create his own crime epic set in America.

He’d be joined by his troops from previous films in Tonino Delli Colli, Ennio Morricone and Nino Baragli. Delli Colli’s cinematography doesn’t quite touch his previous work for Leone (I suppose that’s a downside that comes with not filming in Monument Valley), but unsurprisingly captures several magnificent shots of a New York City landscape unfamiliar to many – both the authentic locations in Brooklyn and the sets in Rome. One in particular that stands out comes following one of the film’s several controversial rape scenes. Noodles stands alone, a small, desolate figure in front of a wide open field, beneath a darkening blue sky, looking at the car driving away the woman he’s loved since he was a child and the woman who will hate him forevermore. The power of Delli Colli’s beautiful photography is emphasised so incredibly well at this particular moment in how it contrasts the morally reprehensible figure we’re looking at. He’s rejected and dejected, as without Deborah’s love he really has no further purpose, and it takes a perfect camera shot for us to truly appreciate that.

Morricone’s return marked his sixth collaboration with Leone in his directorial pieces and as he did almost effortlessly in the past, here he complements Leone’s direction and Delli Colli’s cinematography with his astounding sound – a lot of which, like in Once Upon a Time in the West, was completed prior to certain scenes being filmed. Even with another sublime main title theme, the highlight of the soundtrack is the score for Deborah, which is funnily enough a track that wasn’t only deemed not good enough for another film during the seventies, but one that Leone himself had doubts about, citing its similarities to the main theme for Once Upon a Time in the West. I suppose with that being the case it’s a similar story to A Fistful of Dynamite and Morricone’s occasional “lack of originality”, as it doesn’t sound identical, but there are definitely similarities. However it was important that Deborah had a theme that indicated she had a lot of the same qualities as the Once Upon a Time in the West title theme does for Jill McBain. Without this early on in the film, the differences in class and character between Deborah and Noodles may not have been as powerfully emphasised and the same impact wouldn’t have been felt upon the collapse of the relationship they had.

It’s not just Morricone’s score that benefits the film either, as Leone’s including of an instrumental version of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” to frequently transport us into a different time is beautifully haunting, melancholy and an all round remarkable choice to drive home that feeling of time lost and time wasted evident throughout the film. The way we’re transported is important too, with the editing done by Nino Baragli very arguably being more important a factor in this film than his work was in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West combined. The scenes of the film focusing on the young Noodles transports us into a time of innocence where nobody is truly innocent. Deviance rules the day with theft, perversion and further sexual exploits being just a few of the many activities our young protagonists spend their time making money from. What is consistent though is a friendship between the adolescent Noodles (Scott Tiler), Max (Rusty Jacobs), Patsy (Brian Bloom) and Cockeye (Adrian Curran) that’s so pure it makes the film’s other story following just Noodles so despondent that no song actually would work better than “Yesterday”. Whether it’s the first time we see the older Noodles’ reflection in the train station mirror, the transition as Noodles looks through that gap in the wall where he used to spy on Deborah dancing, or any other, Baragli’s work is magnificent and one of the most important aspects of the entire 3hr46min epic.

On the other hand, it took much longer than Leone and Baragli intended for audiences to truly appreciate these transitions, as America would be victim of a controversial re-edit on release in the States, with the film being structured chronologically instead of the scenes of adolescence being brought to the forefront by Noodles retracing these pieces of his past. That re-edit meant the American release would last just over two hours, sending Leone into even more despair given he’d originally planned for the film to be a longer watch than it already is(!), with him wanting two three hour long films at first, and a four and a half hour film second. You can’t say Leone wasn’t half keeping Baragli busy.

Of his long list of recurring actors, only Mario Brega would feature in this, nearly twenty years after he contributed to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. America would see Leone work with a new acting crew led by De Niro, who’d be using prosthetics to be aged, before Scorsese would use CGI to de-age him in The Irishman. Of De Niro’s many roles, Noodles isn’t a top tier character, with his performance being a more subdued one in contrast to the his more intense and soulfully powerful outings as Travis Bickle and Jake LaMotta in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Instead, it’s actually Woods and McGovern as the older Max and older Deborah, who respectively shine as Noodles’ unhinged best friend / “Uncle”, and the love interest that does still feel something for him, regardless of how much she despises him deep down. It’s worth mentioning that McGovern follows on from a twelve year old Jennifer Connelly, in her debut role, who sets the tone for Deborah’s rejection of Noodles very well.

One detail of the film that I continually can’t seem to get my head around is what the clear point of Frankie (Pesci) was in the film. We see him twice, firstly giving Noodles and friends a diamond theft job post-Noodles’ stint in prison – straightforward enough – but the second and last time he appears is when Noodles and Max leave the hospital after Jimmy (Williams) is shot and we see the camera focus on him with a sneaky look on his face. I doubt this was a surprising lack of follow through from Leone, and most likely there was more to this in the many, many hours of material he had to shelve (Will it ever see the light of day?). Or does the lack of conclusion to his story have more to do with a lot of the film being nothing more than Noodles’ dream after arriving in the opium den?

Yes, the optimum den and whether Noodles is dreaming the events post-betrayal in the Chinese theatre will forever be this film’s most fascinating talking point. Leone even commented on it by stating “We know, but we don’t know, but we know”, virtually giving every theory credence. I honestly think it’s the notion of it being a dream that prevents the ending with the bin truck and sudden disappearance of Max / Senator Bailey from being too confusing and even considered a weak finish. We’re told leading into this finale how Noodles tipped off the police about Max’s plan to rob a bank, and how this ultimately led to his three friend’s deaths. So with Noodles not only raping the love of his life, but also being responsible for Max, Patsy and Cockeye dying, for the elderly Noodles’ story to be a dream allows this character who can’t be redeemed to give himself a chance to justify his actions, and when given the opportunity to finish the job by murdering Max / Senator Bailey and escaping, he refuses. For him this is redemption and it’s why the film ends with him grinning as the credits role. David “Noodles” Aaronson may not be De Niro’s most compelling character, but alongside Leone he did create one of cinema’s most unsung sociopaths.

Even though Once Upon a Time in America is my least favourite of Sergio Leone’s six major films, it’s more than apparent that Leone’s crime epic is something that should be marvelled at. Even with its ambiguous ending and lengthy run time that may not be enjoyable for everyone, it can’t be said that Leone and his crew didn’t put everything they had into making it. It actually makes the re-edit all the more frustrating when we think about the efforts of the director alongside Delli Colli, Morricone and Baragli to craft something entirely unique and fitting given America’s long history. The shift in tone from his westerns and the very melancholy aura are aspects that might have you wondering if you liked this film at all, because it’s far from Leone in his purest form, and even though The Godfather stopped him from revolutionising and conquering the crime epic like he did the western, this was undoubtedly a staggeringly good way for him to conclude his legacy.

Rating: 4/5