Noodles is then seen boarding the first bus to leave New York, going to Buffalo, where he will live in hiding under a fake identity for the next 35 years. Regaining consciousness, Noodles finds out that Max, Patsy, and Cockeye have been killed by the police, and is consumed with guilt over making that phone call which led to the scenes which begin the film. Shortly after, Max, who has followed him to the office, knocks him unconscious for calling him crazy. Noodles does this at an end-of-Prohibition party. Carol, who also fears for Max's life, convinces Noodles to call the police on his friend for a minor offence, just to keep him in jail for a short time. While there, Max suggests robbing the New York Federal Reserve Bank, but Noodles sees it as suicidal. Max runs after him and they go to Florida together. The gang's financial success ends with the repeal of Prohibition, when Max considers a suggestion to set up what was to become the teamsters' union, which Noodles refuses and leaves. Noodles tries to impress Deborah on an extravagant date, and rapes her on their way home in a limousine, after which he becomes remorseful. The gang prospers from bootlegging under Prohibition, and providing muscle for union boss Jimmy Conway O'Donnell. Meanwhile, during a robbery, the gang meets Carol who soon becomes Max's girlfriend. Noodles reunites with Deborah and tries to rekindle their relationship. Noodles is arrested, and sentenced to 12 years in prison.Īn adult Noodles is released from jail in 1932 and is reacquainted with his old gang: Max, Patsy, and Cockeye, who are now major players in the bootlegging industry during Prohibition. One day, Bugsy ambushes the boys and shoots little Dominic, who dies in Noodle's arms, who then stabs Bugsy to death and injures a police officer who tried to intervene. Noodles is in love with Fat Moe's sister Deborah, who aspires to be a dancer and actress. The boys establish a suitcase money fund, which they hide in a locker at the railway station, giving the key to Fat Moe, a reliable friend who's not part of the operation. Later Max's camera enables them to blackmail the policeman, having sex with a teenage girl, and thus start their own gang independent of Bugsy, who had previously enjoyed the policeman's corrupt protection. Noodles confronts Max but a crooked policeman steals the watch they were fighting over. Planning to rob a drunk at the moment a passing truck hides them from a policeman, they're foiled by the older Max Bercovicz, who jumps off of the truck to rob the man himself. He and his friends Patrick "Patsy" Goldberg, Phillip "Cockeye" Stein, and little Dominic commit petty crimes under the supervision of the local boss Bugsy. He leaves the city.ĭavid "Noodles" Aaronson struggles as a street kid in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in 1920. He successfully kills one of the three thugs that are after him but learns that the thugs have murdered his girlfriend while looking for him and finds that someone else has stolen his money. In a flashback, he watches the police remove three disfigured corpses from a street. The proprietors slip into a hidden opium den and warn a man named "Noodles", but he pays no attention. The film begins in medias res with gangsters entering an Indonesian puppet theater, looking for a marked man. The following description is that of the film's full European cut. The specific scenes and their order vary from version to version. The film is presented in non-chronological order, from 1920 to 1968, and it is largely told through flashbacks from the viewpoint of one person. The original "European cut" has remained a critical favorite and frequently appears in lists of the greatest gangster films of all time. The shortened version was a critical and commercial flop in the United States, and critics who had seen both versions harshly condemned the changes that were made. The American distributors, The Ladd Company, further shortened it to 139 minutes, and rearranged the scenes into chronological order, without Leone's involvement. Leone originally envisaged two three-hour films, then a single 269-minute version, but was convinced by distributors to shorten it to 229 minutes. The cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli, and the film score by Ennio Morricone. It was the final film of Leone's career and the first feature film he had directed in 13 years. The film explores themes of childhood friendships love, lust, greed, betrayal, loss, broken relationships, together with the rise of mobsters in American society. Based on Harry Grey's novel The Hoods, it chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City's world of organized crime. Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 Italian-American epic crime drama film co-written and directed by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro and James Woods.
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