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ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
Directed by: Sergio Leone.
Produced by: Arnon Milcan.
Written by: Sergio Leone, Leonardo Benvenuti, et al., based on the novel The Hoods by Harry Grey
Director of Photography: Tonino Delli Colli.
Edited by: Nino Baragli.
Music by: Ennio Morricone.
Released by: Warner Home Video.
Country of Origin: USA. 229 min. Rated: R.
With: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Tuesday Weld & Treat Williams.
DVD Features: All-New Digital Transfer. Remastered Soundrack. Commentary by Film Critic Richard Schickel. Excerpt from the Documentary Once Upon a Time: Sergio Leone Profiling the Making of the Film. Photo Gallery. English/French Audio. English/French/Spanish Subtitles. Trailer.

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
February 21, 2004

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