The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

156 Michael Polish
I’ve heard it suggested that this is Citizen Kane retold as a gangster epic.
Polish: You end up having James Woods and Robert De Niro; there’s just
so much personality in those guys. It seems to divert your attention to a
sort of Citizen Kane story just because they’re so clear to what they want to
be. When you watch those two, they end up being two brilliant actors who
were so young at the time but each took a different path but so respectful of
what they do.
That was one of the criticisms of this film: This is Leone’s tribute to
American cinema, but an America as seen through the eyes of a man
who knows America only through the movies. [Spoiler alert:] Another
was that you couldn’t have a gangster disappear for thirty-five years,
although some critics were willing to grant the film some operatic
license on that point.
Polish: I need to disagree with that because people can disappear; gangsters
can disappear. One of my answers comes from my favorite line of the
movie, “No one is better in denial than an American.” When Noodles comes
back and says, “What have you been doing all these years?” that’s as purely
American as you can get; nobody knows it better than an American.
One thing Leone understood was America is made up of immigrants. He
knows the people living here, the temptation. He understood that because
you don’t have to be American. At that time when he was talking about it,
his relatives could have been here. I don’t think he’s that far removed.
His vision of America seems a little nostalgic, however.
Polish: I think that’s a criticism his Westerns got. What’s unfortunate about
my viewing of it, I thought that’s the way the West was. His interpretation of
Westerns, I thought, was what the Western was really like. I was told much
later that they were considered “spaghetti Westerns.” I thought John Ford’s
Western was the opposite of what everyone else was getting. I thought what
Leone did was really it.
Were they more real to you?
Polish: As a kid they played to me much better. If they were considered
operatic spaghetti Westerns, I had no clue. They came to me easier; they