You Can Have Him
A friend sent along this video piece featuring Once Upon a Time in America costars Rusty Jacobs and Scott Tiler — the guys who played young James Woods and Robert De Niro in Sergio Leone‘s 1984 gangster classic — visiting some Manhattan-Brooklyn locations. “But they’re wearing T-shirts!,” came my reply. “So it was taped last summer. Or maybe two years ago. Or five. In any case, what’s the point?”
It’s interesting to hear Tiler say the following about Leone: “It’s almost unheard of that a director spends 11 years conceptualizing a film and not making any other movies in the interim….this movie was so in his blood, so in his conscious and unconscious, that he understood every last element…every line in the script.”
If he knew it that well, I asked myself, then how could Leone have come to an agreement with the Ladd Company that said/stipulated that Once Upon a Time in America would run no longer than two hours and change? (Or two and a half hours or whatever it said in the original contract.) And yet he comes up with a six-hour cut that is gradually pared down to 227 or 229 minutes. Nearly four hours long.
Of course, it’s been widely accepted for decades that the longer OUATIA is a much better film than the chronological, pruned-down Ladd Co. version, which was put into theatres at a running time of 139 minutes, or 90 minutes shorter.
But I'm still asking myself why Leone and his producers would sign an agreement to turn in a two-hour-something cut in the first place. Insanity. This was never explained.
I'm an admirer of the full-length Once Upon A Time in America, but I’m not in love with it. I’ve never been much of a Leone fan. I’ve felt from the get-go that he was over-rated. All those relentless close-ups of sweaty guys wearing sombreros and chomping on unlit cigars. I know that one is expected to swear by Leone, but I’ve never been able to make myself re-watch his films on DVD. Once is enough.
Come on, the shit he did with Clint is classic, so is once upon a time in the west. In fact i’d take him over Hawkes and Ford and all those glory tale telling western directors that hollywood produced.
Leone probably signed the agreement so he could get the movie made. A lot of other filmmakers would have done the same thing. Even if we are “expected to swear by Leone,” I have to admit that “America” is the only film of his I love.
‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ is my favorite Western of all-time. In my opinion, it’s better than anything John Ford ever did…
I pretty much agree with Welles on this one. Watching Once Upon A Time In The West I was close-upped out after an hour and wondered how he could build drama after that, and the movie eventually went for extreme close-ups of the characters’ eyes. Also, I never understood what his westerns were really about, but I do love some of the set-pieces. Of course one has to have humility when discussing a director who’s worshipped by so many cineastes and other directors, and all of this may have something to do with me never understanding the attraction to the Western myth in any form, or the fact that I’ve never though “coolness”, which I assume they go for with all these staring-matches, was ever interesting, but I’d love to know what makes Leone one of the greats, apart from some sublime moments of “pure cinema”.
what makes his westerns great are how stripped down they are, how he tells the story with very little dialogue..jeez.. they were like Hawke’s Al Caopne movie with paul muni….
So Leone needs defending now? Not bloody likely.
I love this film – I think it’s worthy of mention in the same breath as Godfather and Goodfellas.
It’s not perfect – and perhaps not quite at their level – but it’s complexity and authenticity are really amazing. It’s a perfect example of a film that makes a bit more sense each time you watch it (though you have to invest like 4 hours each time…)
I hated once upon a time in America. Absolutely hated that movie.
Love that De Niro’s name is Noodles.
AUATIA is not like Leone’s other films. It’s ani-mythic. The most graphically violent scene happens right at the beginning, and the final showdown is a conversation between two old guys. The big shootout occurs in the middle. It’s not even completely clear what happens to Wood’s character at the end. The protagonist commits a particularly nasty rape.
To everyone expecting The Good, the Bad and the Ugly crossed with The Godfather, it’s a shock, a real rug-puller. To this day, I’m not sure quite what to think of it.
But GBATU and OUATITW are fantastic on the big screen, really transcendent pure cinema. They’re all style, but what style! I’ll catch them projected any time I can, and I’m kind of shocked that Wells, who loves man’s-man stuff and widescreen cinematography, isn’t a big fan.
Never a big fan of Once Upon a Time in America (an interesting but overambitious failure), but the rest of Leone’s work is pure gold IMO. I love his operatic take on the American West. Can’t wait for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly on blu-ray.
Minor correction frank – Noodles commits TWO rapes. The girl in the first one just seems to have some issues of her own…
It’s ironic that the film that probably has the truest sense of 1930′s New York life verisimilitude was made by an Italian director not named Coppola. Several times I would lose track of what the characters were doing or saying because I was off studying the background details.
This is one of my personal all time favorites right here.
This needs a Blu-ray release BADLY. Don’t get me wrong, the transfer on the DVD is top-notch but I hate having to switch discs right in the middle of that factory scene.
Never a big fan of Once Upon a Time in America (an interesting but overambitious failure), but the rest of Leone’s work is pure gold IMO. I love his operatic take on the American West. Can’t wait for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly on blu-ray.
Wells is talking out of his ass here. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon A Time in the West are two of the all-time great cinema experiences.
The first time I saw ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, I felt somewhat the way Wells does, and I was watching the extended cut, but that was about 15 years ago or so. I just watched it again recently and I now understand the hype about it. One of the things I like is how ambiguous it is – is this all a dream Noodles is having, or did it really happen?
Oh, and one part that rarely gets mentioned – in her film debut, Jennifer Connelly already shows she’s someone to watch.
Wells is talking out of his ass here. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon A Time in the West are two of the all-time great cinema experiences.
There’s stuff I love about this movie; especially when DeNiro is in the opium den (which itself seems wildly out of place for 1930s-ish America)… there’s that phone that rings, and rings, and rings, and then finally a shot of someone picking up a phone headset,,,, and the phone sound keeps on ringing (to show it was clearly part of his dream).
I also love that you can interpret pretty much the entire second half of the movie as an opium dream of Noodles. But too much of it is dumb and patently unrealistic; ESPECIALLY the notion that James Woods character would become a SENATOR, and none of the former gang would notice or recognize him anywhere. Jesus, that’s a hard one to take.
Much of the affection for this film comes from the actions of the studio at the time; just like with Gillliam’s Brazil, everybody’s feelings about the movie’s quality are completely affected by our generalized frustration over what the studios did…
To answer Wells’ question: Hubris, tempered with the likelihood that this was his very last chance to make the film. That’s why he signed the devil’s pact. He clearly realized he could SHOOT the movie he wanted, and probably thought that when he turned in his cut, the studio would recognize the serious folly of fuckin with his masterwork. He thought wrong…
Poor Leone already had compromised himself before he ever shot a foot of film….having seen the visually butchered tape and TV versions of
“Once Upon A Time In The West”…he deliberately avoided widescreen for “America’.
I admire ‘America’ , but I’ll always remain in
love with the Eastwood Trilogy and “West”…
….Leone did something few directors ever attempted…blending cinema with mythic, larger than life Grand Opera……of course it was all
overblown and exaggerated to the nth degree, but that was the pure joy of it….(I especially loved the insane visual design of his films….the
peasant’s adobe house in “Good, Bad and The
Ugly”…once inside, it seems to have endless
corridors and rooms…..or the doomed red-headed
family in “Once Upon A Time In The West”…and their house that seems larger than the Overlook
Hotel in “The Shining”)
I agree with moviemaniac. Like all great films, Once Upon a TIme in the West invented a new cinematic language. It’s working squarely within a genre, to be sure, but it paints the stately Hollywood epic using expressionistic, almost avant-garde strokes. In doing so, I think it tells an old story in a new way.
And Henry Fonda just owns the screen.
I remember hearing the late Donald Westlake tell a story about getting called into a meeting with Leone to work on this movie… the thing was, according to Westlake, that Leone already had a screenplay with all the action. He wanted Westlake to write all the dialogue.
Some great shit in this movie, mostly the stuff with the kids, but the attempted rape scene in the car with DeNiro McGovern is SHOWGIRLS bad.
lazespud – Noodles is the only gang member to survive and hence be able to ID the “senator.”
Treat Williams is clearly corrupt and he’s the only other one who would know.
Personally, I’ve never bought the opium dream theory for a bunch of reasons but Schickel makes an interesting case for it on the DVD commentary and – damn, yeah- that annoying phone ringing opening is genius.
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