|
Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
Leone's 1984 gangster epic chronicles the rise and fall of four Jewish
mobsters, beginning in the 1920s, through the end of the Prohibition era, and up until 1968. The movie, originally shown at the Cannes Film
Festival to great acclaim, was then cut to the point of incoherence for its
U.S. theatrical release, which was a commercial and critical flop. This DVD is
the first time it has been available in its entirety in the U.S. The
leaders of the group of bootleggers and burglars are sensationally played by
De Niro and Woods, respectively. Look for a young Jennifer Connelly in a fine performance as
the adolescent
version of the movie's embodiment of love and purity.
The film, which provides a more complex variant on The Godfather saga, is
just as remarkable as the Coppola classic. Perhaps the primary reason to
watch it, though, is its meticulous recreation of immigrant life in New
York's Lower East Side toward the beginning of the 20th century, which is
hugely aided by Delli Colli's stunning cinematography and Carlo Simi's
production design. It is in these sequences in which the movie feels most
vibrant, and in which Leone's distinct take on the genre is most explicit,
with the griminess of the streets and its harrowing depiction of poverty
grounding it firmly within the tradition of such Italian neorealist classics
as Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief.
This is not to say that the film is not imbued with the stylization
characteristic of Leone's work: indeed, its nonlinear narrative structure;
its use of slow-motion; its haunting musical score (by regular Leone
collaborator Ennio Morricone) prominently featuring the pan flute; and its
iconic wide shots give the film a poetic richness similar to that which
Leone brought to his spaghetti Westerns. Its languid pacing and leisurely
observational moments - such as its holding of the camera on seemingly
trivial incidents - gives it a
contemplative feel that would be left out of more conventional gangster
movies. While some of the plot points, like the exact workings of the mob's
involvement with the labor movement, are a bit hazy, the film keeps the
viewer riveted through its sheer force of style. Ultimately, its
hallucinatory quality - arguably induced in its protagonist, Noodles (De
Niro), with the assistance of opium - makes it difficult to tell which
elements of its story are real and which aren't, which is probably the
point.
DVD Extras: The making-of documentary excerpt provides poignant segments with
Leone's wife, Carla, and actor James Coburn, who emotionally describes
Leone's disappointment with what the studio did to his film in its initial
American release. Also, the anecdote from one of the film's writers, Stuart
Kaminsky, of how Leone brought him a script with directions for action on
the left side, and a blank space on the right side to be filled in with
additional dialogue, provides an interesting insight for cineastes as to
Leone's filmmaking process, and perhaps to the reason why the film's
conversational exchanges are a bit stilted, as its critics have highlighted.
Additionally, Quentin Tarantino makes an appearance in the documentary,
citing the influence of Leone's work on his own, which, indeed, can be seen,
most recently, in Kill Bill, specifically in the way in which it plays as
homage to the kung-fu genre, and even in the use of the pan flute on its
soundtrack. The audio commentary by Time critic Schickel is dry, but packed
with encyclopedic tidbits, such as its description of the film's
semi-autobiographical origins in novelist Grey's own life. Reymond Levy
|
