Der var engang i Amerika
It has been quiet on this blog for some
time, largely due to my summer vacation in Japan, but also because this entry
clicks in at almost 4 hours. With all my other summer activities, this amounts
to watching a full season of a tv-series. Things take time.
When I think of Sergio Leone, I invariably
think of his westerns. Applying his particular format of super close-ups,
composition pictures, long takes and epic scale on any other setting is difficult
for me to wrap my head around. Yet why not? To do this on the American gangster
movie though, seems like a stretch, until you realize that this is just another
sort of western.
Sergio Leone’s swan song is about a Jewish
gang in New York. Chronologically, it starts in the early twenties where a
group of boys, Noodles (Robert De Niro, Scott Tiler), Patsy (James Hayden,
Brian Bloom), Cockeye (William Forsythe, Adrian Curran) and Dominic (Noah Moazezi),
do small jobs for the more established gangsters until Max (James Wood, Rusty
Jacobs) shows up and their gangster activities become more serious. This is not
where the movie starts, though. The opening is an orgy of violence where a
series of people are shot or tormented ruthlessly, forcing an adult Noodles to
escape to Buffalo and a new identity. This is a worthy Leone opening which is
only marred by the incessant ringing of phone that started to get to me badly.
In 1968 Noodles returns to New York and as he
walks down memory lane, we follow his “career” in flashbacks. These includes
the shocking killing of Dominic, the rise of the gang with Max and Noodles
forming a leadership team and Noodles infatuation with Deborah (Elizabeth McGovern,
Jennifer Connelly), the sister of part time gang member Fat Moe (Larry Rapp,
Mike Monetti). The killing of Dominic sends young Noodles into a frenzy where
he kills the murderer and stabs a policeman, earning him several years in
prison.
When Noodles is released in 1931 everybody
has grown up and the gangster business is lucrative but tough. Max and Noodles
disagree on the direction with Max wanting to take chances Noodles are not
ready to take.
This is where the movie becomes complicated
and where the 1968 thread ties in with the opening in 1933. I do not want to
reveal too much of what happens here, but frankly, I am not myself too certain
what happens. Suffice to say that Noodles have been living for 35 years
thinking he killed his best friend while Max was actually alive and kicking and
essentially stole everything that was Noodle’s.
This would not be Leone if the main characters
were not a complex combination of good and evil or at least complex. The movie
works as a portrait of Noodles, his aspirations and desires. Ruthless and
violent on the one hand, but still with a sort of moral compass, especially
when it comes to loyalty and the boundaries of what is acceptable. This gets
really complicated when it gets to Deborah, a girl he loves and who cares for
him, yet refuses to commit to him. There is an infamous rape scene where he has
learned that she will leave him to go to Hollywood, “forcing” him to take what
is not freely given. This is frankly one of the ugliest scenes in a movie full
of ugly scenes and we are somehow supposed to understand why he does it. Yet, I
suppose that even he can see that he went way too far and maybe this is what
changed him for good.
I suspect that Leone wanted to extend this
portrait of a man to a portrait of a nation growing up, that the story of this
gang is somehow also the story of America as seen from Leone’s Italian chair. I
am not certain how well this analogy works or how flattering it is.
There is no doubt that “Once Upon a Time in
America” is a big movie. In every sense it is large and that includes the
production value. Every scene is thought through and there are so many details
everywhere. It also takes its time, for better or worse. On first release the
original movie was cut down from four to two hours and the scenes ordered
chronologically and the movie tanked. The version in general circulation today
is almost the original length and has been celebrated as a masterpiece. I am
not certain I would go this far, but it is a movie that needs to be watched
slowly.
My main objection to “Once Upon a Time in
America” is that I am struggling to see the point, but that may be more my
problem than the movie’s problem. Maybe I just need to think some more about
it.
