Scribe & Green on the BIG screen

There are far too many people out there writing “reviews of movie-films & articles about them with absolutely no clue what the hell they’re talking about." Here are 2 more of them! (Well, one of us knows what the h___ we're talking about, but we'll leave it up to you to decide who that is...) Ultimately, can two people as opposite as Scribe and Green agree on anything?? That's where the fun begins. Won't you join us? (Every now and then we'll add a guest review, just for kicks.)

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Once Upon a Time in America

SCRIBE'S TRIBUTE TO SERGIO REVIEW:

Once Upon a Time in America is one of those films that justify the phrase “They was robbed, I tell ya!” How in God’s name this movie didn’t get nominated for just about every Academy Award known to man is not only baffling, it’s downright infuriating!

Spaghetti Western director Sergio Leone has three definite masterpieces in his resume, and this is the third and final of them. (The other two are The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West) The film, based on a novel called “The Hoods,” offers a unique perspective on the American gangster era as it focuses on four young Jewish boys rather than Italians.

Told from the perspective of “Noodles” (Robert De Niro) we get to see three eras in this film, going back to the early Twentieth Century, the 1930’s and culminating in the 1960’s.

Noodles is a tormented soul, a character with a past that is etched into every line on his face by the sixties and we are slowly shown why through a series of emotionally charged flashbacks. Leone wanted to create an epic, magnum opus of a film that rivaled “The Godfather” in its scope and drama. Dare I say he surpassed it in every measurable way?

So why was the movie ignored by Oscar? Simple: While its original version was seen in Europe, where it was hailed as a masterpiece, American film studios in the Eighties still thought we were all too stupid to follow a lengthy, non-linear drama. So they did what they always did back then: The created an “American version.” In this case, that version shaved off over and hour and removed the flashbacks so everything was in sequence. Not only did this destroy the dramatic impact of the film but it made the conclusion predictable and pointless.

Now that the original version has been restored, its greatness has been reaffirmed, albeit too late for any awards. Leone died devastated by what had been done to his film. I try to honor his memory every time I watch it.


***** out of *****

GREEN’S “DON’T KNOW NUTTIN’ ABOUT NOBODY NO MORE” REVIEW:

David Aaronson, (Robert De Niro) or "Noodles" as he’s better known, comes back to the ‘hood of Brooklyn in 1968 as an old man. The very same ‘hood where he made his mark as a Depression Era gangster and where his career began in the days before and during Prohibition. Now he's been tracked down from a life of anonymity to complete one more job. But who hired him? Who knew him from the old days?

Let’s call this film The Godfather Lite because for a gangster flick, there was surprisingly little violence. There was some, to be sure, but not nearly as much as I’d expected.

I wasn’t allowed to watch many R rated movies in 1984 when this movie was released. Thus, I never even knew that it existed until recently when I was taking some quiz about movie directors over on Facebook, and this movie was one of the answers to one of the questions. Naturally, it looked good, so I signed it out of the library. I also included it on a recent list of choices I gave to the scribester to review for this blog, thinking he wouldn’t pick it. Naturally I wondered what I was getting myself into when I discovered that Once Upon a Time in America had a run time 11 minutes shy of four hours long!

It is always interesting to me to watch a movie with familiar actors in their much younger days. Such is the case with this film, with such a great cast of contemporary heavyweights in the acting biz. How can you go wrong with Robert DeNiro, James Woods, Tuesday Weld, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, among others and the feature length film debut of Jennifer Connelly, who must have been twelve when this was filmed in 1982 or 1983. I found it a little disturbing how close in resemblance Connelly was to McGovern, who played younger and older versions of the same character.

As a side note, I wonder how many actors, besides De Niro, have portrayed both Italian and Jewish gangsters on film? And done each very well...

This was longtime Italian director Sergio Leone’s final epic masterpiece, for which he was nominated Best Director (but didn’t win) at the 1985 Golden Globe Awards, BAFTA Awards and (not surprisingly) actually won a silver ribbon for his directorial effort from his native Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists.

The hauntingly beautiful music, by Ennio Morricone, adds depth and texture to the story and is almost like an additional character. The script itself must have been a monster to organize a shooting schedule around. There are a few dead spots in the screenplay and probably an equally good story could have been told in about three hours.

I was a little disappointed in the library DVD I borrowed, which froze near the end of disc two, even though I cleaned the disc, and made watching the extras about Sergio Leone impossible.

I’d buy a copy of this film if I could find it for around $10.


****½ out of *****

Once Upon a Time in America (1984, R, 229 minutes), starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Tuesday Weld, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Burt Young and Treat Williams. Based on the novel by Harry Grey. Screenplay by Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, Sergio Leone, Stuart Kaminsky and Ernesto Gastaldi (uncredited). Directed by Sergio Leone.

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3 Comments:

At 31 March, 2010 23:11 , Blogger Tim said...

As I was putting the formatting together for this review, it struck me as interesting, and somewhat odd, that a bunch of Italian guys would write a film about Jewish gangsters.

 
At 04 April, 2010 14:13 , Blogger c nadeau said...

Well I think the novel's author was not Italian but if I were Italian I'd wanna point out that there were other ethnicities in organized crime, too!

 
At 06 April, 2010 17:26 , Blogger Tim said...

Interesting bit on the author of the novel that the movie was based on from wikipedia.org

 

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