An almost four hours film saga whose action takes place in the world of the American mob and spreads over several decades. Robert De Niro plays the lead role of a gangster whose career is filled with corpses, robberies, collaborations with corrupt police and large unions, and whose love affairs have no chance to end well. The special effects of cinema make De Niro move smoothly from youth to the age of memories and vice versa, in a narrative structure that uses flashbacks copiously. But no, the film we talk about is not ‘The Irishman‘, and the hero of the film does not belong to the Irish mob but rather to the New York Jewish mob during the Prohibition years. The film we talk about is ‘Once Upon a Time in America‘, made 35 years before Scorsese‘s film, and was the last of seven films directed by Sergio Leone. It’s amazing how this Italian director managed to build a remarkable cinematic opera in just seven films. He may also have been the most American of a non-American film directors.
Obviously, Sergio Leone had the ambition to match the masters of American film on their territory. After succeeding in the western genre, he tackles the saga of mafia families, modeled on Coppola‘s ‘The Godfather‘ whose first series came out a decade earlier. Even if it failed to reach the same level, ‘Once Upon a Time in America‘ is an achievement in many ways. The action takes place in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the famous bridge, and is segmented into three moments: the early 1920s when the neighborhood was an area predominantly populated by Jewish immigrants from Europe, 1933 at the end of the prohibition that enriched the gangs of alcohol traffickers, and 1968 when the neighborhood was transformed and the aging mobsters (those who had survived) were either retired from business or had become rich and entered politics. As in ‘The Godfather‘ and ‘The Irishman‘, the heroes never question the legality or morality of their activities. Crime is a family business, and the issues that concern them are related to family loyalties, to the code of honor of the world of crime, to friendship and to love affairs. Of the five friends who started together their careers in crime as teenagers, only Noodles (Robert De Niro) will try in his own way to stick to the end to the friendship pact concluded in his youth. To what extent does this adherence to the mob moral values compensate for a life of crime that destroys almost everyone around him? This is a question whose answer is left to the spectators.
The film is excellently written and narrated in non-chronological order, but all episodes are linked and explained in a coherent way. (This is true for the full version, I read that there was a short version for screening in theaters much less clear due to bad editing). From the point of view of details, the best rendered are the periods between the two world wars, and especially the first one taking place in the almost exclusively Jewish neighborhood of the 20s. The music is composed by Ennio Morricone whose collaborations with Sergio Leone left behind some of the best movie music scores ever written. Some of the songs are performed by Gheorghe Zamfir, and even if the pan flute is not a Jewish instrument, they integrate well and contribute to the ethnic color of the film. De Niro‘s performance is excellent, the makeup helps him move smoothly from the 1930s to 1968, and the comparison with the role in ‘The Irishman‘ where he was rejuvenated with computer graphics effects is very interesting. James Woods is also very good in the role of Max – Noodles’ friend, accomplice and rival – and the relationship between the two is the emotional axis of the story. We also see in this film the debut of Jennifer Connelly in the role of teenager Deborah, already radiating the beauty and personality of the actress she will become. Even though Sergio Leone failed to achieve Coppola’s cinematic perfection, ‘Once Upon a Time in America‘ is a very good and interesting film, which has survived so far very well the passage of time, and which finds well its place into the category of the great American saga films. Leone would be pleased.