Badlands Collective – Once Upon A Time In America (1984) Restoration UK Premiere

Let’s start with a little story shall we, not a fairy story as the title of the film suggests, but a hard-nosed business story from the associated brutal corridors of local government. So, as some of you will be aware I commenced a new assignment recently, and as is the way of these things I also acquired a new ‘handler’ from the interim consultancy I’m working through (they’re based opposite Claridges in Mayfair so quite swanky I have to say). In this interpersonal world these consultancies do like to maintain the veneer of a human touch, so I met up with my new colleague (let’s codename him Q for ease of reference) for a chat and discussion of the current mission. Once the work stuff had evaporated I and Q got to debating other matters, the subject of hobbies and imminent weekend activities arose so inevitably the conversation turned toward the movies. ‘Oh I absolutely love gangster movies’ Q remarked, ‘Goodfellas and Casino are my absolute favorites’. ‘Well’, I respond, a devilish glint in my eye ‘then you’ll be excited to hear that I’m going to see the UK premiere of the newly restored 4K edition of Once Upon A Time In America this weekend?’ I beam. A slightly bemused Q offers a confused look. ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of that one’ is the muted response. ‘Really?’ I respond, with growing incredulity. ‘De Niro, Pesci? and Jimmy Woods teamed up in Sergio Leone’s epic masterpiece of the Jewish mob a decade before Casino’s triumvirate reunion?’ I counter. ‘Nope, doesn’t ring a bell’ is the humble reply. A self-proclaimed gangster movie fan whom has never heard of yet alone seen OUATIA? It’s inconceivable of course, and with my double agent antenna definitely being disturbed severe action is immediately required. The conversation stumbled on but clearly all was lost at this stage, thus I quietly tendered his wet-work retirement to our clandestine superiors before retiring to my club for cigars and a brandy nightcap.

The Badlands collective have done themselves proud again with another wonderful film event following the Harris Savides double bill from last year, and first up I’ve no real desire or inclination to expand much beyond my BFI screening review from a harrowing six years back which can pursue at your leisure. There is really only three, or perhaps four (if you’re being a mathematical purist) essential texts when it comes to the great post war American gangster film. First of all there is Goodfellas of course, then the first two Godfathers (which some count as one entity), and Once Upon A Time In America jostling for superiority in the pantheon. Sure there are other highly regarded films in the canon – The Departed, King Of New York, Scarface and the aforementioned Casino all leap to mind as potentially ambitious capos, but none of them quite achieve the same metaphorical plateaus of the American Dream forged as financial hoarding fulcrum, unimpeded by such trivial impediments as legality or morality, capitalism writ large as the defining social and political institution of the 20^th century. From its fairy tale title Once Upon A Time In America holds this water but its killer punch are its deeper levels of sophistication and symmetry, it uses the genre trappings of the Warner Brothers crime pictures and the wider movement of film noir as the iconographic stand on which to hang its real hat, a haunting treatise on time, loss and betrayal within the lifespan of one shattered soul. It’s subjective stuff as I love all these films but with a .38 pressed to my head I’d probably opt for Goodfellas as my favorite for its pure relentless energy. But when you’re in a certain mood, on a lazy Sunday bank holiday say, well then immersing yourself in an epic four-hour and a half hour cinematic odyssey can bless you with criminally diverse dividends, especially with twenty minutes of resurrected material which elaborates certain sequences and broadens crucial relationships.

As you would imagine the 4K restoration was glorious, it still retains an element of grain to critically preserve that aura of a film recalled through a woozy gauze of a half remembered dream, as it tilts and sways through the childhood of early 20^th century New York to the twin tower milestones of 1933 and 1968. Morricone’s haunting, simple melodic score brings tears to the eyes, that simple refrain echoing throughout Noodle’s wasted life and abandoned love, a aural character moment to equal the harmonica refrain in the sister film Once Upon A Time In The West. It’s an odd film as with the exception of Deborah there are no characters to empathize with or emotionally connect, as naturally over four hours and sixty years of one man’s life you’re destined to establish some sense of connection. In that sense Leone snaps you back to reality from the melancholic nostalgia with some shocking violence, particularly one of cinemas most harrowing rapes – and I mean ‘harrowing’ in the sense of emotional destruction not visual exploitation – which obliterates any ‘feelings’ we could possibly have for these selfish, violent, criminal bastards. It’s these designs that elevate America up to an operatic & metaphoric plateau, illustrated with those trademark Leone push zooms and extreme close-ups on those monolithic embittered faces, when his camera isn’t prowling through the architectural space to wallow in the lavish historical production design of the rasping Manhattan streets and speakeasys.

So to the matter at hand, the extra material, and to cut straight to the chase there is a full dissection here. There are a few standalone scenes alongside additions to existing sequences, primarily involving a Louise Fletcher appearance when Noodles visits the mausoleum of his betrayed comrades in 1968. Then there is more back-story to his meeting and relationship with Eve, the poor call-girl who is brutally executed in the opening scene of the picture, and perhaps most crucially in the final coda Wood’s futile final position is intensified with a scene featuring Treat Williams corrupt Union shill. Deborah is finally seen on stage in Anthony & Cleopatra, majestic in her life forged away from  Noodles controlling interference, in a scene prefiguring the subsequent emotional reunion. Finally and perhaps most amusingly the great producer Arnon Milchan can be seen in a rare speaking role here – that’s quite another meta manipulation given his mysterious history, and the fact that this restored sequence directly references the grevious situation in Germany for the Jewish people during this 1933 set sequence of the film. All these scenes are glaring additions in terms of visual quality, they are imprinted within a degraded, translucent film-stock which add an odd pallor to proceedings, yet still cat-nip to us celluloid completests.

The jewel in the crown of one of the years core cinephile events was the appearance of Elizabeth McGovern for an all too brief Q&A, as I understand it she lives in London and is wrapping up her contribution to the final season of Downton Abby. Naturally the debate was framed around that legendarily ambiguous ending, of whether Leone ever intimated that any of the more modern portions of the film are occurring in Noodles opium addled head, rendering all the 1968 material as an internal, cinematic fever dream. McGovern patiently explaining that these sorts of discussion simply don’t orbit how films are actually made, as on a day-to-day process you are working on and solving scene after scene on an individual progressive basis – hitting the marks, experimenting with lines, formulating figure movement, turns of the head and flashes of the eyes – rather than deliberating on the holistic scope of the film as a wider engine of its technical, component parts. She also beautifully remarked on just how moving it was to see the restored film at Cannes in 2012, nearly thirty years to the day from when it was released, sitting with De Niro, Jimmy Woods and Jennifer Connelly. When it arrived at the scene where Deborah meets Noodles again after three decades of film time (the best scene in the film incidentally) she turned to see De Niro sat next to her nearly three decades on from the 1984 premiere, some weird meta-film world ouroboros which digests back on Leone’s lamenting hymn to time lost. I love the movie, although I don’t think these additions are essential, its more like the Apocalypse Now redux – fascinating and interesting to peruse, but the original cut still works best in balance of storytelling pace and pathos. I’m pretty sure that America would be in my all-time top thirty if I ever deem to construct such a list, that ambiguous finale immortally transcendent on the screen, the scene even playfully starting on an image of shadow-play and artifice. Wiser souls than I have noted the ingestion of the narcotic can be seen as sacrament, a purging of the soul for the treachery he has just unleashed on his childhood friends, before that turn to the camera frosted with a sepia soaked veil, before that Mona Lisa, indeterminate smile. Sheer poetry, the final scene frozen in amber from one of the all time great filmmakers;

May 28, 2015 | Categories: Art, Film, London | Tags: 4K, Cinema, Collective, Crime, Film, gangster, genre, Leone, Movies, Once Upon A Time In America, Restoration | Leave a comment