"Once Upon a Time in America" (Italian: C'era una volta in America) was Sergio Leone's final directorial masterpiece, released in 1984. The four-hour saga, based partly on Harry Grey's autobiographical novel, follows the fates of five friends from the Jewish Lower East Side over half a century, from the 1920s to the 1960s.
Plot and structure
The film centers on the story of David Aaronson, nicknamed Noodles (Robert De Niro), whose life is shown through a complex weave of timelines and memories. Starting with petty crime in their teenage years, Noodles and his friends — Max, Patsy, Cockeye, and little Dominic — gradually rise through the criminal hierarchy during Prohibition. The story culminates in a betrayal that shatters their friendship and reshapes the rest of their lives.
The narrative is nonlinear, spanning three time periods: the 1920s (the characters' childhood and youth), the 1930s (the height of their criminal careers), and the 1960s (the return of an aged Noodles). Running alongside this is the romantic thread between Noodles and Deborah, adding to the central tragic story of friendship, betrayal, and unfulfilled dreams.
Production and the film's fate
The film took Leone many years to make. Having begun developing the idea in the late 1960s, the director spent a long time fighting to secure the rights to Grey's novel. Ten hours of footage were eventually cut down to a 251-minute director's cut.
For the American theatrical release, the film was brutally re-edited and cut to 139 minutes, with all its scenes rearranged into strict chronological order, completely destroying the director's original vision. Leone was so outraged that he never made another film for the rest of his life. It wasn't until 2012, at the Cannes Film Festival, that Robert De Niro and Elizabeth McGovern presented the restored 251-minute version.
Artistic qualities
The film has a distinctive dreamlike quality — everything that happens can be read either as real events or as the protagonist's opium reveries. The final shot, of Noodles' blissful smile in an opium den, leaves open the question of whether the events shown were even real.
The film is an emotionally rich elegy about a man ground down by time. As Leone himself put it: "It's a very bitter film — the protagonist's life ends in catastrophe."
Today, "Once Upon a Time in America" is recognized as one of the great achievements of the gangster genre, consistently ranking among IMDb's top 100 films — a defining crime epic and the farewell masterpiece of a great filmmaker.
Cast
- Robert De Niro — David "Noodles" Aaronson
- James Woods — Maximilian "Max" Bercovicz
- Elizabeth McGovern — Deborah Gelly
- Jennifer Connelly — young Deborah
- James Hayden — Patrick "Patsy" Goldberg
- William Forsythe — Philip "Cockeye" Stein
- Tuesday Weld — Carol
- Joe Pesci — Frankie Manoldi