Movies - Once Upon a Time in America

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	Movies - Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time in America (original title C'era una volta in America) (1984) is director Sergio Leone's last film, which features Robert De Niro and James Woods as two Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in the New York City organized crime world.

Set as an expansive and hypnotic film experience, the story explores the ideas of time, memory, love, violence, and betrayal. It is renowned for its beautiful cinematography, the detail of its three historical settings and its intricate, open-ended narration and was, as almost all Leone films, first released in the United States in a heavily edited version almost ninety minutes shorter than the version released in Europe. The short version also eliminates the flashback structure of the film, instead placing the scenes in chronological order.

The film premiered to great acclaim at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival at its original running time of 229 minutes (3 hours 49 minutes).

Source-Novel and Plot-Summary

The Hoods

The film was inspired by an autobiographical novel called The Hoods, written by Harry Gray (a pseudonym), a former gangster-turned informant. The novel itself depicts only the first two-thirds of the movie's chronology. The "contemporary" scenes (which many believe to be a prolonged dream/fantasy sequence) were entirely the work of Leone. The plot is otherwise faithful to the original book, though the rape scenes were not present in the novel, and several character names were very different.

Another major difference is that the original novel featured several historical mob figures (mostly in cameos), including Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel, to name a few. Leone edited out these characters because he felt they distracted from the overall storyline. The Mafia (or "Combination" as its referred to the book and movie) is represented in the final cut of the film by a brief appearance by the fictional Minaldi Brothers, Frank and Joe, played by Joe Pesci and Burt Young, respectively, and their henchmen. There were also a few references to various real gangster anecdotes sown liberally throughout the film. The character of Noodles is based loosely on Meyer Lansky, and Max on Bugsy Siegel (Max's reactions to Noodles' calling him "crazy" is taken directly from Siegel's real-life reactions to his nickname), and several of the hits and acts of violence were based on photographs of real incidents, such as the hit on Joe Minaldi, which was based on Bugsy Siegel's death.

Leone had wanted to make the film since before The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
but had great difficulty in securing the rights to the novel, and in arranging a meeting with its reclusive author. Gray finally met with Leone several times in the '60s and '70s, and was a fan of Leone's Westerns; before his death in 1982, he ultimately agreed to the adaptation. Part of the reason why the production took so long was that another producer had the rights to the novel and refused to relinquish them until the late '70s.

Leone also used as a reference for the film's visual appearance, the paintings of such artists as Reginald Marsh, Edward Hopper, and Norman Rockwell, as well as (for the 1922 sequences) the photographs of Jacob Riis.

Once Upon A Time In America

The story interweaves three different eras in American history: 1968, the early 1930s, and the early 1920s. The film shows an elderly Noodles (De Niro's character) looking back on his life and beginnings of his mob career. However, in the DVD commentary, Richard Schickel presents the notion that everything is an opium-induced dream which the main character has in 1933, containing memories from the past and contemplations on the future. This so-called "Dream Theory" is popular among many fans of the film, and is often the cause of heated debate (see below).

Plot Summary

The plot involves the remembrances of Noodles in 1968, having been summoned back to New York by unknown persons (after hiding out for over thirty years). As he tracks down the person who has contacted him, he is forced to confront his past.

The film, which begins in 1933 with the aftermath of the death of Noodles' friends Max, Patsy, and Cockeye after a failed bootlegging operation, and the Mafia hunting down Noodles, consists mostly of two large flashback scenes, along with a framing device as Noodles in 1968 tries to track down the person who contacted him.

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