Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Directed by Sergio Leone
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
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11 films that influenced Once Upon a Time in America
What critics say influenced Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in America, with its name obviously derived from Leone’s previous Once Upon a Time in the West, is a gangster film of the highest order, and, at the same time, it recalls so many of its predecessors, from the Warner Brothers classics of the 1930s to The Godfather.
Clearly influenced by The Godfather - wags called Noodles and Max the "kosher nostra" - it is made on a massive scale.
Now you could sum up "Once Upon a Time in America" by saying it is a mob movie, it is Sergio Leone having regretted passing on directing "The Godfather" delivering his vision, an epic vision of a group of Jewish gangsters.
The Godfather is undoubtedly the most acclaimed gangster film out there, but I'd take Once Upon a Time in America over it any day.
The opening sequence a visual overture equalled in the cinema only by Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) conjures an atmosphere of constriction, with slow tracking shots along ceilings, deserted lobbies, and empty corridors.
That it was meant to be the culmination of Leone's career is obvious from the title, a clear echo of Once Upon a Time in the West , and when we recall as well the fact that Leone favored Once Upon a Time...
Once Upon a Time in America, with its name obviously derived from Leone’s previous Once Upon a Time in the West, is a gangster film of the highest order, and, at the same time, it recalls so many of its predecessors, from the Warner Brothers classics of the 1930s to The Godfather.
Sergio Leone was the man who reinvented the western with the Dollars films starring Clint Eastwood and also the masterly Once upon a Time in the West.
Like Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone's 3-hour-and-47-minute gangster epic (1984) is a foundation myth, though the quality of the myth is very different: the focus here is individual rather than collective, and the form is cyclical and subjective rather than linear and expansive.
That honor will always belong to his other fairy tale-titled pastiche, Once Upon a Time in the West.
While filming “Once Upon a Time in the West,” Leone became enamored with “The Hoods,” a novel by “Harry Grey”, a gangster-turned-informant named Harry Goldberg whom Leone later befriended.
As you can see, Leone pays a nice tribute to A Clockwork Orange with this sequence.
Leone, co-adapting from Harry Grey�s novel (The Hoods), isn�t concerned with grand crime capers (although the film has its solid share including a comical baby-switching moment that would be right at home in A Clockwork Orange), but about history and time.
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This is right up there in the top 10 of all time with Herrmann's "Citizen Kane," Williams' "Star Wars," and Goldsmith's "Patton," among others.
It's a scathing indictment of America's recent past and perhaps that's why, like Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, it was a resounding flop on its US release and was heavily cut by its panicked distributors.
Longer isn’t always better: “Heaven’s Gate,” another epic flop of the era that was drastically cut and later restored, remains an incoherent, self-indulgent bore.
Where Chabrol's once innovative approach now seems dated and mundane, Melville's remains vibrant and stirring, buoyed by a subtle and unobtrusive stylization that predates similar work in Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" films and Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America."
Much like the far reaches of space are to “2001: A Space Odyssey” or the long, winding Hollywood roads are to “Mulholland Dr.,” Prohibition is merely stage dressing for a tale of intensely personal drama that transcends genre trappings to tell a tale of haunting introspection, temporal misdirection, unremitting power and potent symbolism.
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He turned his attention towards adapting Harry Grey's partially autobiographical mobster novel The Hoods at the very beginning of the 1970s, but a combination of rights issues, financing, and the sheer damn scope of the thing meant that 13 years had passed since Duck, You Sucker before the director premiered his seventh and final credited feature in 1984.
That's a practically Malickian gap between features; for comparison, only 12 years separated Duck, You Sucker from Leone's first, uncredited work as a director on The Last Days of Pompeii .