The SmarK DVD Rant for Once Upon A Time In America
– It’s a rare director that can make a classic in both the western and gangster epic genres, but Sergio Leone managed to pull it off. Unfortunately, this proved to be his last movie, too.
Taking nearly 10 years from start to finish (he turned down The Godfather in 1974 to make this one), it premiered at Cannes in 1984 at an astounding length of 229 minutes, and was so well-received and highly-praised that Warner immediately hacked nearly 90 minutes out of the movie for general release. The result was a mess. But hey, DVD saves us all, and now it’s here and in the full version again. Unfortunately, while the movie is restored and perfect again, the same cannot be said for the DVD itself.
The Film
Okay, first of all, there’s no way to pussy-foot around this, so let’s get it out in the open right now: This is a LONG movie. 10 minutes shy of four hours, you need to set aside an entire afternoon to watch this thing properly. Also, it’s not exactly Pulp Fiction in terms of snappy dialogue and fast-paced action — Leone sets a very deliberate pace, filled with extended dramatic pauses and reflective character moments. For instance, at one point during a tense confrontation between the main characters, Leone spends about 3 minutes just having them all sitting quietly in an uncomfortable silence while Robert Deniro stirs a cup of coffee. Also, the movie is told completely out of order, with things being thrown out like pieces of a puzzle and left to the viewer to reassemble as they go along.
Okay, if you’re still with me, this is the movie — Deniro plays David “Noodles” Aaronson, a two-bit hood whose life spans the period from 1905 until the sixties (and probably beyond), along with his gang of Jewish friends who form his backup. Primarily, his best friend is Max (played as an adult by James Woods), and they end up having a tumultuous relationship, to be sure. As the movie opens, Noodles (rarely referred to by his given name, if at all) is wasting away in an opium den, having betrayed his closest friends in the world and led the police to them, which has resulted in a shootout that leaves them all dead and Noodles with bigtime guilt on his head. Why did he betray them? We don’t know yet. That’s one nice thing about this movie — it just throws a huge plot point out there in your face right off the bat and leaves you to catch up with it later. Anyway, we move forward to 1968, as Noodles meets up with his remaining friend from the old days, Fat Moe, and they wonder who took a briefcase full of money that was left in a locker. What money? Again, we don’t find out until much later. Noodles then receives an invitiation to a party, from whom we don’t know, and he takes that to mean that someone knows he’s been hiding out for 35 years and is coming to collect. He flashes back to his childhood, and it’s here that the movie kicks in with more traditional storytelling, as we meet the young Noodles and see his first encounter with Max, and their tangles with the law. This portion of the story is pretty interesting, as much of it focuses on the raging libidos of the young men and deals more with sex than violence (a local underage hooker charges a charlotte russe for “anything you want”, but a young man bringing his payment is unable to resist the greater temptation of the pastry). But that ties together with the violence, as the young thugs catch the local cop engaged in his own pastry-session with Peggy, and thinking quickly, they take a picture and proceed to hone their blackmailing skills to improve their standing in the community. Noodles, meanwhile, meets a young dancer (played by Jennifer Connolly in her film debut, and she’s already getting naked) and falls in love (or at least lust) for life. Unfortunately, before his teen lust can be paid off, he has a run-in with the guy whose job his gang has taken, and he ends up shanking both him and a member of the constabulary, leaving him in the hooscow for the next 20 years or so. When he gets out, Max is there to meet him, now a high roller in the crime world.
This is where the real meat of the movie begins, and to reveal more would be to ruin the wonderfully crafted tale that Leone spins as we learn the hows and whys of what led to the betrayal that opens the movie. I will note that Deniro, as both the middle-aged and elderly Noodles, is a far more laid-back and mellow gangster than he played in Goodfellas. There’s twinges of Jimmy Conway here, especially in a pair of rather brutal rapes perpetrated by Noodles, but overall he comes across as a guy who would be deeply into existentialism if he had more time to read. The only things that matter to him are his friends and his honor — he shuns money for peace of mind on more than one occasion and has a strict code about the jobs he will and will not take. On an odd note of trivia, Treat Williams actually plays a character called Jimmy Conway here, and he’s the complete opposite of the Goodfellas character — a weak politician who is manipulated by warring crime families.
And then there’s the ending.
I don’t want to spoil things for those who haven’t seen it yet, but for those who have, there is a theory that has propagated over the years that the entire later portion of Noodles’ life was merely an opium dream, and in fact what we see at the beginning of the movie was the final word on the matter. Presumably everything that happens to Noodles in the 60s was a guilt-induced fantasy, and all the worst things that could possibly happen, happen. He would then have to be able to forsee television, instrumental remixes of “Yesterday” and labor union problems, but maybe it was REALLY good shit, who knows. There’s also a VERY enigmatic scene with a garbage truck (those who have seen the movie will know exactly what I’m talking about) that even Leone was tight-lipped about. I was also left scratching at my head at it, and my only thought on it is “There would have been blood” — I think it was a decoy for something else, but what I don’t know and the movie doesn’t reveal. Like all great movies, you are free to put forth your own wacky theories about what it means.
The one REALLY big criticism about this cut of the movie, though, is the way the discs are split up. For some reason they made it a single-layer, double-disc set, and split the movie at an arbitrary point 2 hours in, right in the middle of a tense gun battle. Even worse, there’s an actual old-time Intermission only forty minutes later. They could have easily fit 2:40 on one single-layer disc (the WWE does it with every DVD!) and thus done a little less intrusive disc switch. There isn’t even a polite little message to switch discs — it just bluntly cuts to the FBI warning!
That technical issue aside, it’s nice to finally have the full cut restored and on DVD, and hopefully Once Upon A Time In the West won’t disappoint when it’s released this year as well. Once again, be warned — this is no Godfather, but it’s a very thoughtful and brilliantly-made gangster epic. Hell, pick up The Good The Bad and the Ugly while you’re at it, too, and make it a Leone double-feature.
Highly recommended.
The Video:
Unfortunately, in the years between the original release and this DVD, god knows what happened to the negative, but the results aren’t pretty at times. Things look really good during brightly lit scenes and daylight, but for the dark portions of the movie (which is a lot of it), there’s lots of evident scratches on the negative, dust, and contrast problems, not to mention compression artifacts out the wazoo every time there’s black on the screen. The picture is also exceedingly grainy and kinda harsh — I keep the sharpness turned all the way down on my TV, and it still didn’t produce any “softness” in the picture here. Unfortunately, short of a full restoration, this is probably the best transfer we’re gonna get, which is a shame.
The Audio:
Speaking of a shame, why they bothered with using up a full 448Kps on a 5.1 track is beyond me, since it’s not even in STEREO 99% of the time. Even the music comes entirely from the center channel, and they might as well have just done a proper mono soundtrack and been done with it. This is Dolby Digital in name only — a huge disappointment compared to the great mixes on the Godfather movies, to name one. And it’s not like they needed room for extras or anything
The Extras:
You get an audio commentary from Time movie critic Richard Schickel, which is interesting but I couldn’t listen for four hours like I’d be able to with someone like Roger Ebert. He also has theories about the garbage truck scene and other ambiguities with the ending that are worth hearing. You also get the trailer and a quickie featurette from 2000. Not exactly the “special edition” advertised.
The Ratings:
The Film: *****
The Video: **
The Audio: *
The Extras: **
