A Dozen Years

Once Upon a Time in America was initially released in the US as a 2 1/4-hour, brutally studio-edited version of Sergio Leone's 3 3/4-hour masterpiece. The attempt to organize Leone's epic chronologically was devastating, losing the functions of memory and history that were key to the original film's epic structure. The film ranges from nostalgic to tragic, with healthy amounts of comedy, drama, and romance. Spanning five decades in the lives of two men, played by Robert De Niro and James Woods, the sprawling story, which moves fluidly among 1922, 1933, and 1968 on New York City's gangster-ruled Lower East Side, is memorably conveyed through flashbacks, flash-forwards, dreams, and fantasies.