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Once Upon A Time In America (aka C'era Una Volta In America) is a 1984 crime film directed by Sergio Leone, loosely based on the novel The Hoods by Harry Grey, starring Robert DeNiro, James Woods, and Elizabeth McGovern. The film centers around a Jewish-American gangster, David "Noodles" Aaronson, spanning five decades (and 229 minutes), and is framed as an elaborate flashback sequence.

Executive Meddling lead to the US version of the movie being over an hour shorter, and rearranged for the scenes to be in chronological order. It ended up being a flop at the box office, but is now widely regarded as a cinematic masterpiece.

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This film contains examples of:

• Adaptation Displacement
• All Just A Dream: Some people have theorized that most of the film is an opium-based hallucination.
• American Title
• Anachronic Order
• Bank Robbery
• Christie Time
• Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: Noodles' reunion with Max.
• Crowning Music Of Awesome: It has a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. That's all you need to know.
• The Danza: Danny Aiello as Police Chief Aiello.
• Faking The Dead: Max
• Leave The Camera Running: Used very, very frequently. It is a Sergio Leone movie, after all.
• Love It Or Hate It: Most people consider this movie to either be an absolute masterpiece or a boring, overrated, incomprehensible snoozefest.
• The Mafia
• Mind Screw
• One Scene Wonder: Jennifer Connelly as the young Deborah.
• Opium Den
• Rape As Drama: When you think that Noodles has proven to Deborah that he's a more than just a cheap hood, too.
• Scenery Porn: Even if you do hate it, you have to admit that it's beautiful to look at.
• Silence Is Golden: Like most of Sergio Leone's films, it's pretty sparse when it comes to dialogue.
• The Roaring Twenties
• The Sixties
• Villain Protagonist
• Vindicated By History
• Yiddish As A Second Language