Alamy, Capital Pictures
AS A LIFELONG fan of his Westerns, I can’t
explain why it took me until my mid-forties to
watch Leone’s final film. Perhaps it was a distant
memory of the film’s initial reviews; perhaps the
intimidating (229 minutes!) running time. If I’m
honest, these days I baulk at anything past the 90-
minute mark, and ifEmpirehadn’t come knocking,
my decidedly elderly copy would have remained
in cellophane for at least another decade.
What did I expect, going in? Nothing less than
Leone’s unique, revisionist take on the classic
Hollywood gangster film. Initial impressions were
strong. The director’s trademark style was evident
from the start, if muted in comparison to his
earlier films; the aspect-ratio smaller, slow zooms
on the close-ups looking a little dated for a movie
made in the ’80s. YetLeone’s framing of the
Syndicatehoods; the deliberate, measured pace
and manipulation of sound elements;
his heightened depiction of
violence, and the film’s stunning
production design all had me
thinking I’d foolishly neglected
a bone-fide classic.
Then my excitement
waned. Flashbacks and
flash-forwards disorientated
me. Morricone’s emotionally
direct score, present from the
outset, felt increasingly at odds
with the film’s seemingly trite
storyline, which appeared to be
little more than a pulp gangster
yarn about a suitcase of missing
money, using that well-worn
device of an unidentifiable
corpse. Aware, then, that James
Woods would be turning up
later as a failed plot twist,
I started to feel I was maybe tooold for this sort of thing.Disillusionment
descended into borderline loathing as the film’s
‘childhood’ sequences kicked in, interminable
scenes of weak comedy playing uncomfortably
against overtly sexual content. At times, it felt
like I was watching a queasy hybrid ofBugsy
MaloneandSkins.
Relief came with the return of De Niro’s
Noodles, though his scenes of extreme sexual
violence grew increasingly tough to stomach,
and I speak as someone who’s watched a lot of
poliziotteschifilms. A second, grim rape scene
was the nadir for me. Perhaps it was the tonal
clash of that ubiquitous Morricone score
before and after, and Leone’s crass use of back
projection, but the scene made me question the
entire production: the narrative, its soundtrack,
the lead character himself.
Then what happened? I can’t really say how
or when exactly, but at some stage during the
second half I fell in love with it. Deeply in love. As
the film slowly shifts focus to themes of betrayal,
regret and the passage of time, a transformation
takes place and I found myself increasingly
moved by Noodles’ plight. His self-knowledge
of irredeemable sin — his personal failings,
failures and all-consuming guilt — finally opened
the film up for me. De Niro’s silent reaction to
seeing Deborah’s son — and all that represents —
brought tears to my eyes, the dawning awareness
of lost years, dreams and a wasted life.
That slowwave ofsorrow flows through
the final scenes, feeling almost Dickensian in
its scope. A brief flashback to Noodles as a boy,
panicking as Max vanishes under the water,
abandoning him, had me empathising with those
youthful characters I had previously felt little for.
The film was evoking genuine feelings of sadness
at revisiting the past, replicating the passage of
life and time beautifully.
And then — the most breathtaking moment
of the film: a return to Noodles’ opium haze,
suggesting that what I’d been watching was
perhaps only a dream-vision from a guilt-ridden
and — crucially —unreliable narrator. Meaning
everything I’d seen might be Noodles’ fantasised
version of events. Which would
justify the hokey lines and the
Hollywood clichés; perhaps
even Noodles’ worst crimes, if
perceived through the veil of
his own self-loathing.
I finally felt for him;
Morricone’s elegiac score
the perfect expression of
Noodles’ tragic, self-revelatory
odyssey of the soul. Ultimately,
Leone’s film touched me deeply
in a way I hadn’t thought
remotely possible at the start.
And it’s stayed with me ever
since. Time and memory. It
was worth the wait.ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICAAND
POSSUMARE OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY
AND DOWNLOADTHIS MONTHGARTH MARENGHI CREATOR ANDPOSSUM
DIRECTORMATTHEW HOLNESSDELVES INTO
SERGIO LEONE’SONCE UPON A TIME IN
AMERICAFOR THE FIRST TIME↓
THE
FIRST TAKE
CLUB
Classic movies, seen for
the very first timeMANDY(2018)
Another producing-only gig
for Wood, who dug into his
contacts book and went
straight to ‘Cage, Nicolas’
for Panos Cosmatos’ dark,
demented fantasy.
“Mandywould have been
made, but without doingThe
Trustbeforehand, would it
have been made with Nic?
I don’t think so. ButMandywas
one of those things where we
sawBeyond The Black Rainbow
and then sought Panos out. He
pitched us the loose idea of
Mandyat that lunch and then
months later sent us the script.
We had that for about four or
five years before it all came
together. OnThe Trust,
I recommended that [Cage] see
Beyond The Black Rainbow, and
it totally freaked him out. The
initial conversation was for the
Jeremiah Sand role, not the
Red role, but he said he didn’t
feel he had the kind of life
experience to give us what we
needed for Jeremiah. There
was a moment when Panos
said, ‘Wait! Are we idiots?
He’s gotta be Red!’”COME TO DADDY(2019)
A blackly comedic thriller, in
which Wood plays a hipster
who travels to a remote cabin
to reconnect with his estranged
father, only to get a lot more
than he bargained for.
“It was a taut, windy script
that constantly surprised me
every few pages. I never knew
quite where it was going.
In one respect, it’s a son
reuniting with his father after
30 years and also an intense,
weird genre exercise. And I
loved the character, who starts
off as a bit of a pompous
asshole, and as things get out
of his control, it was gleeful
what we could do with him. He
gets put through the wringer,
but the hope is that the
emotional resonance still can
connect. It’s a genre film, and
within genre there’s a little bit
of freedom creatively that
allows you to stretch a little
bit.”CHRIS HEWITTCOME TO DADDYIS OUT NOW ON DVD,
BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOADthe very first time