Once Upon a Time in America

I didn't fancy this version of Caligula they are showing - they have apparently taken out all the soft porn bits! Utter madness! Falling Down is good (I've never liked Michael Douglas, but suspect I may have been unfair to him), and GI Jane is just there, sort of not anything like as bad as it could easily have been, but really not good in any way (maybe Demi's muscles and haircut!).

I understand music is a subjective thing, etc....but man oh man, you are wrong here. :)

As for the film itself...(shrugs shoudlers) I think it's one of the finest. Can't wait for the DVD!

See also:
Once Upon a Time in America vs. Godfather

widescreen composition probably yeah: actually one of the problem i have with it is he's replaying old shtick from his own movies as much as anything, and this wd count as that

the thinness of the story sucks out everything he builds up, re his somnolent cineaste-dream of the new york of 80 yrs ago

You could remember the music becuz there were basically two tunes that got played over and over again, which was annoying (there was more but those two tunes kept being played).

did you see the movie after that mark: Called 'Suture'. I'd like to know what the screenwriters were on when they were writing this story.

it also had the gun-mad cop from police academy too.

I think in the same sense that its highlight seems to be more on exploring emotional experiences: loss and betrayal. There are some films where things like plot, structure, etc., take a definitive second spot to overall atmosphere. I'd say that OUaTiA is one of those movies.

**SPOILERS**
Certainly, if one were to focus on the plot, it is filled with big question marks (some of mine: Max apparently becomes a visible business figure on the West Coast, and this escapes Noodles' notice for over 3 decades? What about Noodles' severe opium addiction leaving NYC? Why would he not re-establish himself in crime upon fleeing NYC, since that has been all he has known his whole life?) or subplots that are hinted may have initially had a bigger role in the movie (e.g., the significance of Joe Pesci and Treat Williams' characters).

But, I don't know, these seem like minutiae to me...they are not the main focus of the movie, which are lost love and personal betrayal. Leone said: "It's not a realistic film, not historical. It's fantasic, it's a fable. I force myself to make fables for adults." and also "It's not a chronological film, and it's not just a gangster story. It's a story of friendship, time, memory, hate and love."

The comparison to Vertigo is that these are the very two major themes of that one, and again its perhaps the greatest example of a Hitchcock film where plot and/or structure (i.e., think of North by Northwest, Rear Window, Notorious) are comparatively downplayed for an experience that seems more dark, brooding, 'personal' (for lack of a better word; I say that because Hitchcock's explorations of the emotion of fear always struck me as relatively more detached and playful in their execution). To me, a movie like The Godfather is more like a North by Northwest of gangster movies, with an emphasis (comparatively speaking) on plot, characters, and pure entertainment. I think OUaTiA reaches in for something deeper...

Of the music, someone described the repetition of the main themes throughout the movie as "annoying". I think that's totally missing the point. There's no way for me the movie would have been half as effective without those repetition of themes. Leone: "I have the music programmed before I begin shooting, so I can use it while I'm shooting. For me, the music is part of the dialogue, and many times much more important than the dialogue. It becomes an expression in itself." Morricone (the composer): "Leone granted a greater importance to the use of music than most other directors. For him, music was really as important as dialogue and all the other components. Therefore, he felt it was important to ask me to write the music before he shot the film...It wasn't because of our friendship; it was strictly his particular style..." Milchan (the producer): "By the time we started shooting we had recorded easily two-thirds of the music and it was playing on the set...the actors walked on the set knowing the exact mood and the feel of the movie."

it could be but i can't remmeber now...

Oops! That should say "made ESPECIALLY so" (I don't want to suggest that the scene would not be brutal otherwise).

Best film of the weekend though was surely Midnight Run.

haha alonso tate: yaphet kotto already has the best smile=>grin in cinema but when he's arresting serrano and all he does is break into a smile!!

Could someone remind me why people got all hot and bothered about Falling Down, when I thought it was intelligent, literary and moving? I'm sure some people found it pretentious, but i don't care about them - it was the political/ideological objections that i recall bubbling around.

Falling Down => white rage is ok => go tim mcveigh (i think this is a silly reading but i think it was what pushed buttons)

Falling down = pretentious?? am I not reading too deeply into it? I just thought it was a slightly different take on an action movie.

Falling Down = man gets angry at world, goes to pieces, shoots all in sight

Commando = man gets angry at kidnappers, goes haywire, shoots them all.

JP = a turned-up nose AND a turned-up butt!! in fact round the pelvic area she looks a bit like an articulated Star Wars figurine

when my mum was little she cd apparently do this comical walk w.a teddy bear balanced on her bum and how she has terrible back problems => i ph34r JP is heading the same way

Midnight Run and Falling Down both holding up well and destined for classic status.

I like OUATIA, but switched over just before De Niro goes out on his ill-fated date with McGovern since by that point all my favourite bits have already happened. They should really have got another actress to play Becky in the 60s (and yes, I have read the defence to this point).

actually i quite like that scene where she's taking off her make-up (well de niro is lousy, consistent w.his perf throughout the pic — ALL the kids are better than the respective grown-ups except whoever plays the young james woods — but i like the way she uses diane keaton shtick as a fakey actress-tantrum, which he sees through)

Midnight Run was classic, tho. Whatever did happen to Charles Grodin?

No-ones mentioned Saving Private Ryan yet. Er....

I think the world is waking up to the realization that any film that involves the premise that one must rescue Matt Damon from death is surely by default a flawed enterprise. The Bourne Identity may have done good enough business but would rival Spider-Man for box office take if in fact the idea was that you were to cheer for the CIA or whoever was after his butt.

But I'm saddened that ppl don't share my enthusiasm for 'Wild Things', which I think is a truly great piece of softcore glam trash - the absurd, 'over-determined' number of twists/reversals, the glossy photog, the lezzing up, the sleaze, the genre cynicism - it's like 'Mullholland Drive' meets 'Showgirls'!

the bourne identity was easily as good as spiderman. I don't like matt damon either but the plot made you forget that he was there.

I have heard this theory applied to Keanu Reeves and The Matrix as well. Alas, I cannot overcome that barrier.

Falling Down was read by some as a right wing movie: the ordinary white man unleashing his righteous rage on a world that is unfair to ordinary white men. This bears very little resemblance to the actual film, obv.

Right on Out Of Control - an obvious attempt to cover both Scum and Made In Britain, in which context it falls (no iconic central performance, for a start), but it was really excellent - and yes, Tamzin Outhwaite was extraordinarily good.

I agree with mark s that the kids are great - tho I don't think DeNiro's rubbish in it, either. One thing I really like about it is how it shows the flip-side of the Corleone/Scarface figure: instead of the OTT maniac who gets success only through losing his soul and alienating his loved ones, we have this very low-key, "About Schmidt" type figure whose bitterness/regret seems very human, very banal even, although the circumstances leading to his fall were just as dramatic as those in "The Godfather" and "Scarface". There could've been a great movie about Noodle's life in Buffalo (well, maybe not, but I do think that the idea that it happened lends a lot of weight to the movie).

I can't really see why the fuck it's supposed to be seen as a fairy tale.

SPOILER AHEAD:

Same goes for Max's threachery; it's just suddenly THERE.

I can't believe the haters on this board sometimes...

A lack of respect for authority and extreme amounts of ambition != willingness to betray your friends. Max already HAD what he wanted (he *was* the boss - he had partners, granted, but not superiors), and his "work before chicks" attitude is just common gangster pragmatism. I *suppose* the desperateness of the times might have justified screwing over the rebellious and alltogether difficult Noodles, but offing your other partners in the process? That's a level of cruelty that the movie previoulsy never attributed to the guy.

And hey Roger, I'm not hatin' just for the sake of it! I *wanted* to like this movie! In fact, by the end of disc 1 I was all ready to go "this is a total classic, what's everyone on about?" Too bad it went off the rails so badly towards the end...

But anyway, this movie is a big friggin' crazy mess and It is fascinating and the repeated musical themes are just deranged and the ending just boggles the mind and the whole thing would probably be amazing to see on cough syrup. I love that freeze-frame of DeNiro's demented mug at the end too. It will never surpass OUATITWest for me, beacause that film is so beautiful and hellish that it makes me want to cry, but it is still worth the time it takes to say "what the fuck was THAT all about". And the kidz stuff is priceless. Sometimes I think the whole reason that movie exists is for the one shot of the kids and the bridge. And it's worth it if that's the case.

Yeah, definite "Monty Python & The Holy Grail" moment there.

I can't get into the "it's a mess and it's GREBT!" pov because it still fells like a let-down to me when compared to what it could've been judging by the early stages of its saga, if that makes any sense. I dunno, I'm not anti-ludicrous or anything, I just like to know early on if a movie's gonna go that way, or at least before the story gets intriguing enough for me to reallly care about how it turns out (cue my enormous love/hate affair w/ David Lynch.)

I had no idea that it was gonna be about jewish gangs before I saw the movie! Does every ethnic minority in the U.S.A. have their own gangster epic? Rok.

Honorable mentions for Henson and Proyas, though.

i shudder to think that the deer hunter is the closest thing to a (non-russian) slavic gangsta film ... but i digress.

i luvs once upon a time in america, sprawling mess though it is ... but if yer gonna get into just one leone film, the one to get is once upon a time in the west. perhaps later today i'll be assed to revive the thread praising THAT one.

Mine is Star Wars, I guess.

Still, there's a vast affection and a vast sense of regret that comes through in "Once Upon a Time in America" and I suppose that's what Leone was after, not anything remotely naturalistic/realistic.

He's in love with all these devices, like the ringing telephone (it's still a haunting sequence, though), and because he simply doesn't care about the plot and has no eye for naturalistic detail, they come across as mere devices--he doesn't earn them.

Daniel, I getcha, but since Eddie brings up the telephone...well, that is one way the movie gives you an inkling that it is not gonna be your usual rags-to-riches saga. I mean, it goes on for what seems like forever!

I finally saw this thing last night, the last of the major Leone films that I had not yet seen. Funny that this thread was revived the other day; I refused to read it 'cuz I knew I'd be seeing the flick last night. Lots of great stuff on this thread. My take is pretty much the same as Daniel's (i.e. lots of great scenes, want it to be great, ultimately frustrating), so I don't have a lot to add. Scott is also very much OTM, especially here:

It will never surpass OUATITWest for me, beacause that film is so beautiful and hellish that it makes me want to cry, but it is still worth the time it takes to say "what the fuck was THAT all about". And the kidz stuff is priceless. Sometimes I think the whole reason that movie exists is for the one shot of the kids and the bridge.

So true - I saw OUATITWest around 7 years ago; I bought that Rhino Morricone anthology a couple years back, and when the main theme from OUATITWest played it made my cry as I recalled my strong reactions to that film. I can't imagine the same happening with America (nothing against Morricone's music for the latter though - I thought it was fine). But Scott right again in that one of the main virtues of America is the gorgeous mise en scene. Those shots of the bridge really are fantastic and iconic. One of the great scenes - the abrupt switch in affect between the kids skipping along Brooklyn streets in the shadow of the bridge after depositing the money at the train station, and the sudden appearance of Bugsy.

also - Plus, the way that Elizabeth McGovern says the word "noodles", how great is that?

Yes!!

One other funny thing was that I went into it not remembering exactly who comprised the cast. So when Joe Pesci appeared onscreen, I gotta say my heart skipped a beat! Man, I love that guy. And Danny Aiello was great in his brief turn. And that one dude who played Beansie on the Sopranos even showed up (he's the guy who offers up the drunk for the kids to "roll").

And yeah, the early scenes with the kids were great, riveting. Wish they could have gone on longer. The kid who played the young Noodles was fantastic.

I loved when Max entered the office after Noodles had phoned the police, and turned the handset around.

And yeah, in the beginning, who were the bad guys who had beat up Fat Moe? The guy that Noodles kills when he returns to Moe's looked like one of the Burt Young henchmen dudes. Which could mean they were Frankie's guys. But didn't the gang kill all of those guys after the jewel heist? And how did Max get the money out of the train station before Noodles got there? Didn't Moe have the only key?? I'm baffled.

there is an increasingly large coterie of film critics who think this films is one of "the greatest of all time" etc.

I think it was widescreen but not "cinemascope", maybe? I'm no expert. There's still some breathtaking use of the screen-space though. Like those Brooklyn street scenes. And that great long boom shot of the hotel in Florida, the camera recording all those extras scurrying about in all corners of the screen before training upon Max and Noodles reclining on the beach. This is definitely one to see in the theater. Also I have to say while a couple scenes may have been a bit sluggish, I never felt bored. I can't imagine how they could have cropped over an hour off the thing for American release without completely destroying it.

They did completely destroy it.

All of Leone's other major films are 2.35:1 TechniScope (a European CinemaScope competitor/ripoff, I believe).

So yeah, relatively speaking, Once upon a Time in America is not a very wide film.

I just finished disc 1 and I am enjoying the hell out of it right now...

William Forsythe as Cockeye - one of my favorite 'minor' performances ever

mark s is otm about the make up though.

just finished this. I'm weary now...but I liked it.

Empty, pretty.

once upon a time in the west absolutely pwns it. it's one of the best films evah.

and henry fonda in it may well get one of my five noms if there ws ever an 'oscars of all time'.

mark s otm. and such small portions...

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/new_cut_of_sergio_leones_once_upon_a_time_in_america_on_the_way_with_40/

Dag. I love Leone, but the last thing this movie needs is more movie.

New restoration is revelatory to some eyes:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/cannes-2012-once-upon-a-time-in-america-restored

gave up during the florida hotel scene where max attacks noodles cos he called him crazy. had been dragging on for a good hour before then tho tbf. kids scenes are great.

OK, this clarifies things for me.

The original 229-minute version to screen at Film Forum isn’t new—this is the edition that European and home-video fans have known for years—but the restoration, performed this year by Bologna Cinematheque, is. At last spring’s Cannes, an even longer, 256-minute version debuted, adding a lengthy death scene from Antony and Cleopatra that Leone had chosen to cut. (Frayling’s verdict: “I adore Elizabeth McGovern, but she was not a Shakespearean actress.”) Warner Bros. has since taken this extra-extended cut out of circulation for unspecified legal reasons...

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/film/once-upon-a-time-in-america-restored

how galling... "Let's put back shit the filmmaker didn't want in there and call it an extended cut."

Just ordered the "extended director's cut" from 2015 (251 minutes), which is available on Blu-Ray at Amazon for $7.88.

Well I'm going for the endurance test 251 minute version at a screening in a couple of weeks. Will there be an intermission, is what I wonder.

Is this the same long version that's been available for a while, or a new, new restoration?

have you seen the matrix yet ned? (it's rubbish too)

xpost Appears to be the one talked about a few comments back by Morbs (McGovern is mentioned in the announcement for the screening).

In re mark s's question, never did, no. I am more kindly disposed to Reeves now, granted.

Excellent film. The themes of failure from young beginnings are the good themes. The phone ringing scene is brilliant and ofc really stretches the nerve endings, and is one of many bizarre scenes in what you'd think is a Godfather rip. But its much better.

It should be longer. That last hour feels like its compressing a lot. I read in the wiki this might've been two films (3 hrs each) and it feels like a lot of holes appear in a rush to finish, weirdly needs more. Which is fine, I was never bored.

Getting one of the gangsters to play the Morricine theme tune on the panpipes was so fkn funny.