The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Once Upon a Time in America
153
How would you describe Once Upon a Time in America to someone
who has never seen it?
Polish: It’s an epic tale of a group of Jewish gangsters in New York from
childhood through their glory during Prohibition and their meeting thirty-
​five years later, but that still doesn’t do it justice because there are so many
interpretations, whether it was a dream of ether or heroin? Or was it a
real, chronological tale of these gangsters growing older and becoming
politicians?
I don’t like to say I know everything about this movie, but just internally
it speaks to me, as just a human, a person alone. I can watch this movie
alone and be a fan. Whether a filmmaker or not, I can be a fan because it
has so many symbols and situations that reflect life itself, growing up. Even
growing up in the suburbs, you still have friendships the same way these
kids have friendships.
Your dad introduced you to it?
Polish: Yes. It was a longer version, at the Tower Theatre in Sacramento.
I remember it having an intermission. It was the first movie I saw to have
an intermission. He would take me to all kinds of movies which I wasn’t
ready for, like Dog Day Afternoon. When it came out I was too young.
Once Upon a Time in America was a rerelease when I saw it, the restored
version.
We also rented it a year or two later. It was in two tapes, and it was the
longer version my dad brought home on video. I remember watching it several
times, not quite sure why I liked something like that at all. When I was
sixteen or seventeen I watched it again and put the story together and really
felt the ambience of it all.
Leone wants to create mood with style, and that’s because he allows time
and picture to be one, as opposed to you seeing just the style and cutting and
filmmaking. He allowed the scene to play out in the fullest extent. He was
probably the best director to evoke time.
He spent what he calls the “mature years of his life,” about seventeen
years, on it. He had ten hours of footage and a four-hour cut. But