Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

A forewarning: this is a violent and vulgar review of a violent and vulgar film.

Sergio Leone's classic gangster masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in America" takes us on an epic biographical voyage of the life of a Jewish Gangster named Noodles (played by Robert DeNiro). From his impoverished childhood in the ghetto of New York in the 1920's, during which he was part of a ratpack, and using his remarkable street smarts to gradually make ends meet in black market jobs and form Mafia connections. Through his adult life as a vicious gangster during the prohibition era, and finally his older years of solitude coupled with grief and sad memories.

Rather like the films of Quentin Tarantino, we are told the story of Noodles' life through a broken linear narrative which jumps repeatedly back and forth between past, present and future. This is a man's recounting of his memories and is done with superb camerawork, visual prompts to create a soulfelt and completely tangible look into a man's past, where we don't so much see the flashback effect, as actually feel a memory coming to life and the present melting away.


Living in a violent world

This film came out in 1984. Like a lot of films of the 70's and 80's "Once Upon a Time In America" was one which really pushed hard against the boundaries of cinematic decency in depicting shocking violence and explicit adult situations. This film contains some pretty horrific images of gore and bullet penetration, there are a lot of shootings, killings, beatings and even more shocking is some of the scenes which specifically depict violence against women and children, including scenes of exposure, rape and molestation.

Yes people seem to forget how violent this period of cinema was, and how in comparison cinema from the 90's to the present day is actually a lot more toned down, despite cliche's to the contrary. And like most films made in the 80's but set in the past, like "Raging Bull" (1980) and "Mississippi Burning" (1988), this is one period film which has no interest in looking to the past through rose tinted spectacles and shows the early half of twentieth century society at its most violent, volatile and callous. In-fact if you put together the violent content of the controversial 90's gangster films "Goodfellas" (1990) and "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) it still would not compete to the violence shown in the first FIFTEEN MINUTES of this film.

However unlike most violent fests of the 80's which revelled in aimless paranoia and mindless testosterone, such as "Scarface" and "The Running Man", Sergio Leone's film had a strong sense of artcraft and polarising. Like with Hong Kong action cinema, the violence was perfectly framed with a terse and contemplative build-up. What makes the violence work is that there's a strong sense of balance between chaos and calm. When the film takes a calm moment it is thoroughly relaxing and keeps us watching. Sometimes violence is expected and anticipated, sometimes it comes suddenly, cutting through the tranquility and serenity and shattering reality.

The Directing of the film is first class- I'd even go so far as to say it is probably the best directed film of the 80's. The directing is better than "Blade Runner", better than "Witness", better than "Blue Velvet". Every frameing, every point of view shot, every jarring shot absolutely kicks. The film's claustrophobically up close and personal violence suddenly jumps out of the screen and grabs you by the neck. When violence erupts you feel everything hit you physically, psychologically and metabolically. You feel like both the perpetrator and the victim in each violent explosion- you feel both the furious impulse to clench your fist and the brutal blow to the face, or the sharp sting of a dagger to the chest, in each sexcapade you feel every erection and flow of sperm, but when the sex becomes violent and violating, you feel the victim's sudden confusion and terror and the impulse to scream and cry with her, you see a young child bleeding to death from a gunshot and you feel his soul slipping away and leaving our world. The violence is darkly beautiful, it defines humanity at its most savage and its most vulnerable.


Old School Gangsterism

The film embodies the cliched gangster situation of a young and reluctant recruit to the mafia becoming part of the gangster culture and becoming a first-time killer, just like in "The Public Enemy" and "The Godfather". The cautionary tale aspect of old Gangster films is also there- after killing one of his business partners under higher orders, Noodles does worry that he may lose friends to internalised killings which are part and parcel of this dangerous life.

"First they tell us to kill Joe, tomorrow they order me to kill you. Is that okay with you, because its not okay with me!"

There's also more elements of vintage gangster emulation to the film which I must elaborate on- Before Quentin Tarantino arrived on the scene, and brought with him a huge dose of satirism and pop culture intertextuality and made it primary elements of the modern Gangster flick, the average gangster film was highly politicised in content, painting the Gangster character as a working class spokesman, articulating working class rage, an intelligent man who knows he is better than all the dead end jobs available to him and so he lives by robbing and smuggling, getting money by screwing over the system and bucking authority.

This post-modern gangster film is one which has one foot firmly in cinema's past. It does not sacrifice its working class perspective- far from it. Noodles' impoverished childhood in the ghetto is shown in explicit detail- living in a claustrophobic and filthy apartment with a shared toilet, wearing smelly and stained rags. Living in a depraved peer environment of gang-b*nging sex, hiding out from volatile hoodlums armed with knuckledusters and knives.

The characters articulate the soul, the street dreams and primal scream rage of the community. In this volatile and depraved world, these characters who are in their element in this environment are perfect tour guides of this life, and they have plenty of charisma and personality to make you appreciate the journey. Even as a teenager, Noodles had above average intelligence, and belonged in the "gifted class" and knew how to apply the basic sciences of effervesence to help the local mob recover a few smuggled goods that were dumped in the New York harbour, so much so that we want him to succeed on his own merit and screw the laws of the land.

We also watch Noodles' friend Max (James Woods) growing up in front of our eyes. Rather like Al Pacino as "Scarface", he is the embodiment of the 1980's gangster yuppie. Rather like Scarface, he is very fond of his cuban cigars and his women- well, until he starts living with them. But beneath the surface, he is a dream-chaser pursuing a life long dream from childhood of posessing grand riches and moulding himself into a Gangster Emperor. But each suitcase of money he stashes never seems big enough, and he's very sensitive about having that childhood dream shattered and reacts with explosive rage to being challenged. Unlike with Scarface, we are compelled to feel his love of that dream and his refusal to let go, and we feel the pain of dented confidence which makes him lash out when challenged, as opposed to what we were subjected to in Scarface- a grown man acting like a child and aimlessly shouting and swearing at anything he can make himself angry about.

Furthermore there are various recreations of the political movements working against the poverty of the Great Depression of the 1930's as we are introduced to the union leader (Treat Williams) of the locally unpopular communist party who enlists the protection of Noodle's men when a rival mafia group try to burn him alive. In a superb piece of claustrophobic frameing, we see the leader's point of view shot as he is doused in petrol, stinging his eyes. After which there is a superb dialogue of conflict of the gangsters and communists and their refusal to compromise their respective ideologies, regardless of who watches who's back.

At this time of working class dissatisfaction and rebellion, the police are the image of oppression, brutal violence and corruption. The cops we meet are ones which gun down and massacre unarmed protestors in worker's strikes, cops are easily bribed by mafia clans and turn a blind eye to their illegal shipments (like characters from a Raymond Chandler novel), and there is even paedophilia. The police are never seen as an image of protection or security, though they are naively viewed that way by society. even Noodles himself occasionally sees the police as an image of hope in his life of compulsive sin and dangerous endeavours, and violent losses of self control. Sometimes even wanting to turn himself in to scare himself into never doing it again. Rather like the hoodlum characters with religious faith in "Mean Streets" (1973) these are characters who know that their guilt for each crime they commit won't catch up with them soon enough to stop them from sinning again. They want to feel the guilt and wallow in it till they become better people but their inner demons keep winning and pushing them on.


The Broads and the Gangsters of Love

Like with most gangster films part of the charm was seeing the women in the Gangster's life. Behind every devlish scoundrel there has to be a great woman. The gangster has always had a talent for using his sharp and to the point self expression to sweet talk the lady. But since this was the 80's, female characters were portrayed in very extreme lights. The 80's was a time of the growth of the feminist movement and the sexual liberation of society. During this period, cinema was either positively reflecting the empowerment of feminism and released sexuality or negatively reflecting everyone's worst nightmares about it. We always remember the empowered women of "Aliens" or the threatening psychotic female antagonist of "Fatal Attraction". When it came to 80's Gangster films, the women personalities were either painted as man-haters, such as in Brian DePalma's "Scarface" or at the other extreme, the women are painted as nymphomaniacs, and this film favoured the latter.

In a film which conveys Noodle's life from beginning to end, it especially looks at all the explicitally sordid details. As a teenager, Noodles was a peeping tom, desperate to catch a look of female flesh. As a man, Noodles becomes a man of exaggerated sexual prowess, the kind of guy who could approach the corpse of a lonely woman who died from swallowing too many sleeping pills, work up his mojo and suddenly turn her from a dead stiff to a live wired nymph. He is also amongst equally perverse company who have the fortune to find like-mindedly dirty women. Since this is always seen through Noodles' eyes, naturally some of the sex is unshown, such as when a character tells a hilarious anecdote about employing a prostitute, but being worried about if he can get it up, he asks the pimp if there's any chance of getting a refund due to "impotence insurance".

The women themselves are actually extremely beautiful and provocative. In a film with an already phenomenal cast, the film-makers wisely seemed to choose the prettiest ladies of the 80's. Does this make the film exploitative? I'd say probably not. These aren't women out of a cheap porn or blaxploitation film or soft core erotic MTV clip. Nor are they women from a shallow sex comedy a la "American Pie" because the female characters have as spirit behind their lust and sexual desperation that keeps them just as human and dimensional as the male characters. The sexual aspect isn't shallow or demonisingly portrayed- its about the natural human fascination with the sight of naked flesh and penises, vaginas and breasts. The desire to reach out and touch somebody, people needing a regular quickie to see them through a miserable existence.

One of the central female characters in the film is Carol (Tuesday Weld), who becomes Max's mistress, and she is introduced to the mobsters in quite a unique way. Quite often in films where bad guys are doing a heist and taking hostages, there's usually a scene where one of the randy black hats starts coming on to a beautiful hostage. Its such a cliché, you just know what happens next. But Carol is the kind of hostage who, rather than being offended and kneeing her harraser in the gonads, she would actually become aroused by their dirty talk and aggressive macho posturing. Something which reflects the beauty of the film's ability to be violent and vulgar and yet hit the right spot that draws you in and speaks to your soul rather than repulses and sickens you.

After this bizzare chance encounter with Noodles' men, her relationship with Max really fleshes her out as a dimensional character rather than a sex object- Carol is the one who looks out for Max when he is too blinded by greed and anger to see the heights he could fall from. She worries for him endlessly and Tuesday Weld does a fantastic performance as she holds a cigarette with a trembling hand, as she struggles to hold together her words and be heard by the foul mooded Max, or his minions who despise her.

But the main female interest of the film is Deborah. A woman who is first presented to us as something of a mystery. Early on in the film, we see Noodles as an old man (with exceptionally realistic and well designed ageing make-up) looking at an old photograph of Deborah caught in youthful vigour and happiness and peering through a crack in the wall of an old dancehall, where he used to sneak a peek at Deborah when she danced there. On a second viewing of this film, where we learn who Deborah was, it becomes a far more poignant and mentally connecting moment of past reflection.

Rather like Noodles and Max, she is a character we are watching grow up before our eyes. As a teenager, she spurns Noodles' advances, knowing he is a peeping tom and a vandal, although secretly she desires him hypothetically as someone who could be the right man in her life if he could evolve from being an impoverished bum with the morals of an alleycat, to a man of purified spirit and gentileness. Later in life they are separated by his stay in prison, and when they meet again it is clear they have both missed each other deeply. There is wonderful chemistry at the backdrop of melancholy orchestral incidental music, with close-up shots of Noodles and Deborah holding an unbreakable stare at each other.

The relationship culminates in a thoroughly beautiful date scene. One which mirrors and surpasses the tragic date scene DeNiro played with Cybill Sheppard in "Taxi Driver", and in a simmilar vein it climaxes with a sequence of events which aliennates us from Noodles as it forces us to realise how alien and sexually threatening he is. He gives her thoroughly poetic dialogue of a man who spent years in prison thinking of her and the day he'd see her again.

"Nobody's going to love you the way I'll love you. There were times when I couldn't stand it anymore. That's when I thought of you. I thought Deborah's out there- she lives, she exists. And that would get me through it all."

It's so beautiful and tender that we could never imagine him ever harming her. And yet in the following events he finds his love rejected and and reacts savagely by rapeing her that same night. The rape scene is a prolongued and disturbing one which compells our realisation that Noodles character has turned in a grossly ugly way. The scene is also superbly acted and powerful in the way it conveys such pain, sadness, and emotion, carrying with it many tears and the final exchange of goodbye glances between the two- of Noodles' sorrow and Deborah's terrified fury is absolutely timeless.

Despite the non-judgemental approach of the film and the high excesses of sex and groping and exposing, the rape scene itself forces us into the hell of sexual anarchy and describes how a sexually liberated culture is always only one step away from a rape culture. I swear to you that scene really made me think hard about women's issues, or as brotherman (Epinions' very own Gangsta of Love) would describe it, it put me in "annoying male-feminist mode". It made me really understand feminism even at its most pre-emptively hostile and man-castrating, in a way I never had before. I used to see feminism as very unwelcoming and aliennating and made me feel insecure about the opposite sex, but this film makes me see the logic behind feminism's angry attitude. Typically men seek access to or to otherwise transgress a woman's social and interactional boundaries in order to connect with and gain recognition from the opposite sex. On one level this can be innocent extrovert behaviour, however I now see why if women choose to refuse men in such situations, even if the man hasn't really done anything wrong and just wants her company, they often need to make their rejections harsh in order to sharply reinforce in men's minds the existance of such boundaries and layers of boundaries beneath them and through that the sanctimony of the deeper sexual boundaries.

This film is the image of what a man does when he is presented with all the easy sexuality to be had in the world, in a permissive culture where the word "no" doesn't exist, nor does it demand to be defined as an absolute, let alone strong rejections to make him step back. On one level cheap sex obviously doesn't fulfil him, and he seeks sex instead with a woman he loves, but his experiences have still given him the boundless view that because she is a woman, he has all the access to her body he wants. He naturally takes every permission to release his sexually animalistic side in all its compulsiveness and savagery. Never stopping to think of the damage he's done or the life he's wrecked until the damage has been done.

In that the film achieves for me what Larry Clark's dehumanised "Kids" tried and failed to do- it reminds me that sexism isn't something we should take lightly, roll our eyes at or laugh about, nor should we be quick to embrace sexual liberation because it has repercussions which lead to the guiltless terrorising of women and even of underage girls and the ruining of lives. Something which has been proved by history in the way celebrations of sexual freedom such as Woodstock and the recent Puerto Rican Pride parade have descended into savage and horrific rape fests.


Post-modernist Gangsterism

Despite coming out in the 1980's which as a cinema decade, introduced us to evolving post-modernism. "Once Upon a Time in America" isn't your typical post-modern pop product which hands everything to you on a plate. Its use of sudden changes in time require a keen and attentive eye, particularly since we are seeing characters being played by different actors. The jumps between one time period and the next require you to notice the not so clear semiotic signs of the time period. When we see that there are less 1930's cars on the streets and more horse drawn carts, or we recognise the way street kids change their fashion with the times from raggedy clothes and coats and worker's caps, to black leather jackets, jeans, and 'fro's.

The film moves at a very slow pace for its four hour length. Even back in 1984 it was becoming uncommon to see a film which didn't give you immediate, MTV style gratification, but it makes you appreciate each moment, and for a grandmaster introspective method actor like Robert DeNiro (this was before he became a self-parodying actor as of late), it actually gives him more room to get to the soul of his character than any of Martin Scorsese' films. We really connect here with his thought processes and his emotions, so much so we almost can hear his brain ticking.

However it does retain an artistic lisence to mess around with the typical formula and structure of the gangster film. The old Gangster films followed the typical apocalypse genre- the image of a violent man who rules an empire causes his own self destruction, where any threat to society is resolved through elimination with cautionary overtones, and so the gangster becomes a tragic hero. Here this formula is distorted and re-written.

Noodles is at first seen as a compromised individual, who conforms to the violent and promiscuous mentality of his fellow gangsters to maintain a relationship of consensus with them. He is seen to strictly live up to his gangster clan's moral codes which separate them from their rival "evil" clans. being prepared to die for them in order to share the same fate as each other. Certainly he is a protagonist of heroism, not only in his romantic pursuit of Deborah's love, but there is a scene where Noodles, as a teenager shows incredible bravery by taking on the gang member who killed his friend. His opponent is a fully grown man with a gun, and Noodles is armed only with a penknife.

However this initial heroic protector role changes dramatically for Noodles when there is a split between him and his associates, and when many of them are subsequently killed. Therefore this is possibly one of the first Gangster films where we see the gangster character survive the downfall of his empire. It's also the first time we see the gangster as an inconsistent character who evolves and transforms in his role- given that the gangster usually represents an unchanging archetype of moral absolutes.

As an old man, Noodles has lost the protection of his associates and has become an outsider who keeps at a physical and emotional distance from everyone he meets. He has also become an individual character who has abandoned his violent ways and protecting role because of both his guilt and his lack of physical adeptness. His speech on how old age has weakened his assassination skills emphasises his declaration of individuality against the gangster life he was once part of.

"I haven't held a gun in my hand for many, many years, my hands shake and my eyes aren't so good, even with my glasses, and I wouldn't like to miss."

Yet despite his vulnerability and grief, it seems Noodles has achieved a piece of mind and a more positive outlook. It is suggested that as a younger character, Noodles felt oppressed by his own demon-ridden nature, his own environment, the peer pressure of his ratpack and it was this mental entrapment that made him lash out and become violent and kill enemies in cold blood. This was reflected in the claustrophobic nature of many of the violent scenes- the rape of Deborah as she is trapped under Noodles in the back of the taxi, when the Communist Union Leader is shot at by drive-by shooters whilst he is in a phone box and the glass shatters around him, or when a vicious ratpack try to crush Noodles to death in the street under the wheel of a cart. But the older Noodles is a wiser Noodles, who is quick to recognise and exploit an alternative way out of a violent confrontation when he sees one, which becomes a wholely significant character trait in the film's confrontational climax.

In typically post-modern tradition, the film has a superb twist and revelation to its ending. I won't give away much except to say it concerns the corrupt cops we saw earlier in the film. It is also an emotional twist which, in compelling a re-examination of past events actually rejuvienates and ressurects those sadly gone years of youthful zest and joy, just like a rebirth. A superb finish to one of the greatest films of the 1980's.

Recommended strictly adult viewing only for frequent shocking violence, gory content, scenes of rape and molestation.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age