"The artistic production of Italian director Sergio Leone ends with a nostalgic smile and, at the same time, with an ironic laugh: that of Noodles in the opium den where he begins and concludes is last movie. In the small theatre of Chinese lights and shades, behind which the opium den is hidden, the Good and Evil competed for the world, until they mingle in the fight".
(Gianfranco Massetti)

The ascent, maturity and fall of a small American gangster along a very intricate chronological story, with continuous temporal shifts backwards or forwards, so that it is never possible to know the present of the action. From the sunny western landscapes, Leone passes to the darkness of s modern metropolis and delivers a passionate choral fresco of an epic age and an exciting (and touching) portrait of a community. It is a male story of friendships and betrayals, of men and sex, passion and violence. And, at the same time, the movie can also be seen as a great romantic saga, from the point of view of an Italian man who has never stopped thinking about America as the country of dreams, notwithstanding its contradictions. The last movie by Leone is all this, and much more: it is a recalling and a nostalgic and melancholic good bye to the world and the people much loved and represented by him. It is a movie made of “doors” (metaphoric and not: that denominated as the door of “time” with the words Visit Coney Island above, that of the funeral chapel, that of Deborah’s dressing room or that of Max-Bailey’s villa) which open but do not close and remain suspended. E. Morricone’s soundtrack is undoubtedly marvellous. De Niro’s final smile is certainly unforgettable and it will remain one of the greatest enigmas of modern history (comparable to the Mona Lisa’s smile in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting). Among the most everlasting scenes, we should not miss the scene of the child with the Russian cream charlotte and that in the hospital marked by the “Gazza ladra” of Rossini. The scene where De Niro mix a cup of coffee with a spoon was an invention of the same actor, an homage to the epic-extended times of Leone’s style. The American version was drastically reduced and re-assembled in the chronological order (as a matter of fact, Proust’s inspiration and the ambiguity of the movie is completely lost) by producer Arnon Milchan (in the movie, the driver who ironically refutes Noodles-De Niro’s money) and by his son’s staff, distributor of Alan Ladd. But, fortunately, it was a clamorous flop. While an English version, edited by Leone, has a duration of one minute longer (with an added flashback at the end). In a first editing, the incipit showed in the small theatre a representation of Chinese shades with the fight between good and evil (a big bat), but Leone cut it as he judged it too explicit with respect to the reference to the circularity of the movie. American Stuart M. Kaminsky – writer, critic, expert of cinema and of detective stories, as well as cinema teacher and theorist – was the author of the added dialogues. He has also written an accurate though short essay about his experience with Leone and his movie, within his interesting book about American cinematographic genres. The movie is inspired by “The hoods”, an interesting autobiography in the form of a chronological diary of the gangster Harry Grey (pseudonym of David Aaronson, though some experts say that his true name was Harry Goldberg), with the nickname of Noodles (meaning “leader” but also ”spaghetti”). Yet the movie seems to follow the book only in some parts (especially the section about childhood or that of Deborah, in the book Dolores, as well as in the scene of the ravings in the opium den). What Leone has added it’s probably his epic and elegiac poetry. In the movie, Gheorghe Zamfir’s panpipes in the soundtrack substitutes the touching melody of Cockeye’s harmonica. Danny Aiello stars as the head of police Aiello. Italian title: “C’era una volta in America”. The last movie directed by Sergio Leone (died in 1989 at home for a heart attack while he was ironically watching on TV the movie “I want to live”, directed by Wise), who could not complete his great project of shooting a movie about the siege of Leningrad, then turning his attention to the East. (www.centraldocinema.it)