Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time in America (1984) dir. Sergio Leone
Starring: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Treat Williams

***½

By Alan Bacchus

It took 13 years for Sergio Leone to get this, his last film, onto the big screen. For the most part the time away served him well, as this superlative exercise in gangster cinema, dramatically heightened to the max with the same dreamy romantic sensabilities of his Spaghetti Westerns, comes close to being the final word in prohibition-era crime films.

The long 229min version is available on Blu-Ray, and since virtually everyone believes this to be the true version of the film, I doubt we’ll ever see that 139mins theatrical version ever again. The length does justice to the immensely epic and emotionally dense character study.

Leone and his team of seven writers tell the story of two best friends David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson (De Niro) and Max 'Max' Bercovicz (Woods) and the evolution of their friendship through their life of crime in 1920’s New York City. Leone elegantly moves us through multiple timeframes without ever getting confused nor experiencing that ‘flashback’ feel. The opening lengthy sequence in 1933 shows us the extended movements of Noodles after the apparent murder of three of his boyhood friends. The scene carries on for 30mins, a set piece so dazzling unto itself, it almost seems out of place in the context of the expansive nature of the rest of the story. We don’t really know why Noodles is on the run, or why he’s aloof and melancholy as opposed to angry and vengeful after such a horrific act of violence. Ennio Morricone’s swooning romantic score tells us there’s a deeper level of emotion going on, something which Leone’s flashforwards and flashbacks teases us with.

After the opening the film settles down into a more traditional narrative, starting with Noodles and his gang as kids in the 20's moving from petty crime into organized crime in step with flashs to Noodles as an aged adult in the late 60’s returning to New York on a mysterious agenda, retracing the steps of his youth.

From the golden brown cinematography to the rich and textured production design of the era to the thematic and narrative connections to the action in the present, the influence of The Godfather Part II is felt through th is 1920's storyline. This delicate touch of Leone’s equals Coppola’s work in these scenes. Leone’s detail in the exterior street scenes is magnificent, teaming with people in every corner of his frames and as far as the camera can see. Leone never attempts to cheat his scenes, instead playing almost all of his action in wide screen grandeur.

The miracle of America is Leone’s ability to not let the sheer size of his canvas overshadow the finer details and individual moments of drama. His big and small moments have equal weight in all his pictures and it's never more important here. Just listen how little dialogue there is in the film, in particular the opening 30mins, a beautiful choreography of camera and actors. Leone's use of all elements of cinema: editing, camerawork and sound design is sublime and masterful. The drone of the telephone ring used in the opening sequence is a surreal use of digetic sound but draws our attention to the significance of a key decision Noodles will make later in the picture. Same with Leone’s attention to the locker key or the charred body in the street – all details set up to be paid off later.

This is the Leone modus operandi peppered into all of his previous films. The incessant drone of that telephone ring recalls Leone’s multiple references to Charles Bronson’s harmonica in Once Upon a Time in America, or Lee Van Cleef’’s musical pocketwatch in For a Few Dollar’s More.

A couple of wonky moments fail the film. The performance of some of the children as well as the casting of Elizabeth McGovern as Noodle’s object of desire Deborah never works. In fact, I could never see why McGovern got so much work back in those days. Her babyface look, I could never take seriously in high drama such as this.

But the scene I’ve never been able to reconcile with the rest of the picture is Noodles' rape of Deborah. It comes just before the intermission after the moment Deborah tells Noodles she’s leaving for LA to pursue an acting career, after which Noodles rapes her multiple times in the back of a car. Rape is something most of us don’t desire to see in a film, let alone the veracity with which Leone’s orchestrates the scene. Deborah’s pleas for help for Noodles to stop only encourages him to rape her even more aggressively. I understand the purpose of the scene, to create a source of regret for Noodles, destroying the only thing he ever loved, and to find a strong enough story beat that would split the pair before their reunion at the end of the film, but this comes at the expense of any kind of sympathy for his character Leone establishes up this point. Save for an earlier rape during the diamond robbery scene, Noodles was an honourable gangster, with convictions or loyalty to his friends. After Deborah's rape, Noodles is never truly taken to task for his dispicable actions.

This kind of scene would fit into Leone’s stylized and mysoginistic Spaghetti Western genre but in this more romantic and authentic world he creates for Once Upon a Time in America, the scene is a major crutch on the film.

And so it takes some mental smoothing to get over this scene and some of the wooden acting to appreciate Leone’s swan song as a dreamy, indulgent and grandiose genre film which it is.

Once Upon a Time in America is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Entertainment

For a Few Dollars More

For a Few Dollars More (1965) dir. Sergio Leone
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonté, Luigi Pistilli, Klaus Kinski, Panos Papadopulos

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

I would never dispute that The Good, the Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West were Sergio Leone’s best films, two of the best Westerns ever really. And I wouldn’t argue about the importance of A Fistful of Dollars as the first spaghetti western. But we don’t much talk about For a Few Dollars More. After all it’s the middle chapter in the unconnected Dollars trilogy and it wasn’t the first spaghetti western, nor is it the best.

But looking back on the picture in glorious Blu-Ray, courtesy of Fox’s Dollar Trilogy Set, For a Few Dollars More is indeed a near masterpiece of the genre and very very close to awesomeness of Leone’s aforementioned latter pictures.

Unlike the cynicism and sheer brutality of A Fistful of Dollars, and even The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More is the only other film to come close to the humanity in his characters Leone shows us in Once Upon a Time in the West.

While Clint is billed as the star, the heart of the film is Lee Van Cleef, playing Col. Douglas Mortimer, a former soldier turned bounty hunter plying the wild west for wanted criminals and reward money for their capture. Clint, whose character actually has a name, Manco, is also a bounty hunter treading the same ground as Mortimer, an equally beguiling killer who stacks up bodies for money. The two eventually meet in El Paso following the villainous El Indio ( Volonte) who aims to take down the well fortified El Paso bank.

Manco attempts to join the gang to help take the score while plotting with Mortimer to collect the bounty of each gang member. The bank job is completed with Indio escaping to a small town of Agua Caliente for a final showdown of good and evil, with Mortimer eventually revealing the source of his hatred for Indio, and exacting satisfying revenge against a grievous crime against his family in the past.

Mortimer is portrayed like Charles Bronson’s Harmonica Man in West. While he is as cold and calculating as the other killers in the film, there’s a deep pain which motivates the man in his journey. Leone crafts some wonderful tension between the two gunslingers. When Clint and Van Cleef are on screen together it’s a marvel of gritty eye-squinting machismo, with Van Cleef matching Eastwood’s screen charisma and confidence in character.

Leone and his writers use some of the same plotting devices which he’d elevate to higher levels of grandiloquence in West. Like West Mortimer’s backstory is seen through a repetition of a single flashback and the significance of the mysterious timepiece which is featured prominently throughout is revealed dramatically in the final Mexican showdown.

So you might call For a Few Dollars More a testing ground for Once Upon a Time in the West and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but the picture stands up well on its own as a great often underappreciated Leone Western.

“The Dollars Trilogy” is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) dir. Sergio Leone
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef

****

It took three films for Leone to perfect the style and tone of his new spaghetti western genre. First was “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), fun but also flawed take on Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo”. “A Few Dollars More” (1965) was better, but with “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” Leone created a passionate epic about three men inexorably linked together in a race to find a treasure full of gold buried somewhere in a graveyard.

Blondie (Clint Eastwood) and Tuco (Eli Wallach) are partners in crime. Their modus operandi: Tuco, who has a price on his head, is brought in by Blondie who collects the ransom, then rescues him before he gets to hang. It's a tenuous relationship fueled purely by money. After a disagreement Blondie betrays Tuco and steals his money. Seeking revenge Tuco tracks down Blondie and tortures him to near death. But before he has a chance to kill him they encounter a Civil War soldier who tells them of a treasure of coins buried in a graveyard. Tuco knows the graveyard, but only Blondie knows the grave. Reluctantly they are forced to become partners again.

Meanwhile Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), another badass desperado, is also hunting for the treasure. Over the expansive deserts of the midwest, the three hombres continually play a game of life or death deception - either working together or against each other in the hunt for Bill Carson's cashbox.

From the opening shot we know Leone’s film is about extremes. The shot starts on a wide-angle vista of the desert. Suddenly a dirty and weathered face jumps into a bold close-up – a precursor to a gunfight. It’s an unusual and jarring transition from long-shot to extreme close-up. Over the course of the film Leone moves us across these extreme both visually and emotionally. Ennio Morricone’s melodramatic score is composed with the same methodology. Sometimes it’s a wildly romantic sonata, sometimes is a jarringly guitar pick screaming loud through the speakers.

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is an early expression of revisionist, or post-modern cinema, much like what some of the French were doing with the 1960's New Wave films, revising genre films with their own skewed version of Hollywood. Leone's point of view is from the the most despicable men in the western genre - the greedy men who only look out for themselves and their wallets. Often a Hollywood protagonist (say Jimmy Stewart in "The Big Country") would start out like this, and by the end land on the side of righteousness. Leone's characters remain as ethically challenged as they began. In "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" while this three-way battle rages, America is raging it's Civil War. By seeing the characters move throughout the battles of the Civil War we see an even more egregious example of irresponsibility - one country at war against another other with much more bloodshed than the actions of three petty criminals.

The title is a bit of a misnomer because the three main characters are ALL bad, ALL ugly, and none of them good. Clint Eastwood’s Blondie is possibly the worst of all the characters. Even though he’s been friends and partners with Tuco, he commits the worst act of betrayal by taking his friend’s money and leaving him alone in the desert. Tuco’s actions of revenge which leads to the discovery of the cashbox is an direct consequence to Blondie’s unmotivated betrayal. Even Lee Van Cleef has honour. When he’s paid for something he also follows the job through, even if it means killing his employer.

So the three gunslingers are truly equal which makes the final Mexican standoff the perfect climax to the near three hours of buildup. Few filmmakers can build up and pay off dramatic tension better than Leone. In the three way gun battle Leone paces the scene with extra special care, enhanced by Morricone’s blistering score. In keeping with the revisionist theme, no gun battle would take that long, but it’s Leone manipulating his medium and the genre to extend this quick moment into an eternity. Enjoy.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) dir. Sergio Leone
Starring: Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards

****

In 1966 Sergio Leone filmed, arguably, the greatest western ever made, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” What could he possibly do to top it? The result was his even grander epic “Once Upon a Time in the West.” The title is legendary as it is now used by other filmmakers to title their own personal epics (ie. “Once Upon a Time in China,” “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” “Once Upon a Time in India” etc.)

The title is appropriate because it refers to a type of timeless, yet stylized storytelling that contains universal themes of good & evil, romance, time-spanning arcs etc. Sergio Leone’s film has it all – though not all filmmakers adhere to these standards (maybe there should be a Dogme-95-type jury administering licenses for this title).

Much of what we think about what the “west” was like are impressions formed by myths created by Hollywood and it’s ironic that it was the Italians who expounded these myths into the spaghetti western. The creation of the film was a conscious effort of Leone and his partners (and great filmmakers in their own respect), Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, to combine elements of all Hollywood westerns into the ultimate western mythology.

“Once Upon a Time in the West” tells the story of three characters, Cheyenne (Jason Robards), a notorious outlaw and prison escapee on the run, Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), a beautiful newlywed moving out west to settle her family and a mysterious harmonica player (Charles Bronson) looking for revenge. In their way stands Frank, a ruthless assassin, dressed in bad-guy black, played against type by none other than Tom Joad himself, Henry Fonda. Each story begins mysteriously, and in the classic Leone style motivations and true identities of the characters reveal themselves slowly. Each character is a caricature of a Western archetype. Bronson’s harmonica man hardly speaks a word, but talks with his sharp shooting pistols. Jill is a beautiful bride, but later revealed to be a former prostitute. The evil land developer Morton is a cripple.

The film is style over plot, as it contains scene after scene of stand-alone cinematic power. The opening title sequence is legendary – 15 minutes played in virtual silence as three gunmen wait at the train for Bronson’s arrival. It sets up the style for the entire film – moments in time drawn out and lengthened for maximum dramatic effect. For those unfamiliar with Leone’s work, it can be off-putting, but it pays off beautifully and no other filmmaker (perhaps Hitchcock) has consistently done it better.

The film is elegance-personified, from the gorgeous figure of Claudia Cardinale shot with luminous godlike reverence to the majestically sweeping wide-lens camera moves to Ennio Morricone’s grand score. In fact, film is worth renting or buying just to listen the score alone.

The lengthy drawn-out moments of drama are punctuated and paid off by moments of startling violence. One of the greatest screen introductions is Frank’s shooting of Jill’s husband and children in the second scene. After a slow Hitchcockian build up, Leone unleashes Henry Fonda and his gunmen with some of loudest gunshots we’ve heard on film. Even when people get shot they die in a Leone-signature way – a violent spin and fall. It was a year before the “Wild Bunch” and “Peckinpah blood,” but it’s still shocking and arresting.

“Once Upon a Time in the West” is a must-see, though it might take a couple of viewings to appreciate it fully. The film runs 2 hours and 45 minutes so save up a couple of days in your lifetime, it will be worth it. Enjoy.