
'Once Upon A Time In America': A Butchered Film Rising Up As A Phoenix - yurisagalov
https://cinephiliabeyond.org/once-upon-a-time-in-america-a-butchered-film-rising-up-as-a-phoenix/
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szopa
This is one of those movies I used to watch every now and then with my dad
when I was a teenager (although it's way too long to watch in one sitting).
It's one of my father's favorites, along with Rio Bravo, The Deer Hunter,
Apocalypse Now, and Deliverance (I wholeheartedly recommend all of them, the
last one is some heavy shit). Such a shame that most people get to experience
it in the butchered version. And to think we were getting the real thing on
Polish cable TV and didn't even appreciate it...

~~~
tunap
"Once Upon A Time In The West" would fit well in that list. Very long. Leone
back to spaghetti western roots. Fonda as a pretty good bad guy. And Bronson.
Been a few years, now I have to watch it again...

edit: link

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_the_West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_the_West)

~~~
mariuolo
I think "Duck, you sucker!" is a very underestimated movie. Too bad it was
seriously mistitled: Sergio Leone insisted on a literal translation when "A
fistful of dynamite" might have made a difference.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_You_Sucker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck,_You_Sucker)!

~~~
tunap
Never looked @ SL IMDB page and never even heard of this before, thanks! Just
put it on reseve @ my public library. Of course it`s 157 minutes runtime..

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jbuzbee
I recall back in the day being very confused when I first saw the US release,
but then several years later watching the original. I didn't know the back-
story of the film. I recall thinking "I've seen this movie, but this scene
wasn't in it, neither was this, what the hell?" This was obviously pre-
Internet, so it wasn't easy to figure out what had happened to the movie if
you weren't following the trades.

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weisser
Richard Linklater (Slackers, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood, etc) leads the
Austin Film Society and screened the full European cut then led a discussion
of the film (video of that here:
[https://youtu.be/irYXKADAKjI](https://youtu.be/irYXKADAKjI))

Attending that screening caused me to discover one of my favorite American
films.

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dannylandau
This is one of my favorite movies. I remember learning that he was working on
another movie -- siege of leningrad -- but died before shooting started. A
terrible loss!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Ui65SR8KI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2Ui65SR8KI)

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dudus
I've been focusing my library on Google. For the most part they are great for
both movies and books. But this is one example of a title they simply don't
have. At least in us. I've been waiting for years, I don't care if it's the
original cut or not. I just want to buy it digital from my provider of choice.
It's infuriating this option is not granted as easily. I'll keep waiting.

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weston
If you like this movie, I highly recommend the book it's based off of: "The
Hoods" by Harry Grey.

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DrScump
This partial quote implies that a fully restored version exists (in some
publicly-viewable form), but I don't see any details:

[At long last, materials for some of these missing sections have been found
and re-inserted into the picture under the supervision of Leone’s family and
surviving collaborators. The work has been completed by the magnificent team
at Cineteca di Bologna and L’Immagine Ritrovata, and it has been wonderful to
witness this enlargement of Leone’s vision, step by precious step.” —Martin
Scorsese, Founder and Chair, The Film Foundation]

~~~
exodust
It exists on Bluray, and was released in 2014, running time 250 minutes.

This article is from 2015. It's annoying when articles don't display their
original publish date and you need to view source to see it.

~~~
DrScump
When you notice such missing annotations, email hn@ycombinator.com, and dang
and company will gladly update accordingly.

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fiftyacorn
Definitely one of my favourite films due to its multilayered approach. I also
like the idea of these 20's gangsters growing old

I remember reading a theory that the main storyline in doesnt actually happen,
and it is just an opium induced haze of de niro's character

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salimmadjd
This movie is possibly in top-3 list of any gangster movie collection. I rank
the Godfather (I & II) as #1 and this movie as #2 in my list.

I also consider this to be Sergio Leone's best movie and one of the must-watch
movies by any movie fan.

~~~
emodendroket
The Killer.

~~~
vanderZwan
I can see where you're coming from (both involve crime, intrigue, cops and
robbers), but I don't think it's really same genre.

Don't get me wrong, on its own terms The Killer is an amazing film, basically
defining the _heroic bloodshed_ action genre, and together with Hard Boiled
and A Better Tomorrow among the three must-see John Woo movies.

~~~
emodendroket
They don't go about it the same way, but I think they explore a lot of the
same themes -- loyalty, morality vs. the law, etc. I think people kind of
undersell the Hong Kong triad movies as anything other than mindless action.

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dano
[http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Once-Upon-a-Time-in-America-
Bl...](http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Once-Upon-a-Time-in-America-Blu-
ray/105558/)

251 min running time

------
stevewillows
For those who enjoy commentary tracks, the 4h11m Bluray doesn't contain the
commentary by Richard Schickel (film historian and critic), however the 3h49m
version does [1].

This is the proper theatrical release with an optional commentary track.

For the 4h11m version, the commentary was dropped due to a lack of space and
also because the commentary doesn't cover the additional scenes.

[1] [http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Once-Upon-a-Time-in-America-
Bl...](http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Once-Upon-a-Time-in-America-Blu-
ray/16190/)

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andybak
Can anyone who's seen the four hour cuts comment on whether it would barbaric
to watch it over two nights?

It's very tricky to fit a 4 hour movie into my life nowadays.

~~~
toyg
Once Upon A Time in America should have been a trilogy, it's yet another movie
that was undone by its length and the time it was released. Blade Runner is
another one that should have probably been spread over two or three movies.

Sometimes I wonder what film history would look like, if only movie directors,
producers and distributors had accepted the serial format earlier. It took the
success of _Return of the Jedi_ to make it acceptable to spread a story over
multiple features, and even then it was considered just a geek thing until
Peter Jackson's _Lord of the Rings_ saga. Now Marvel keeps scoring hit after
hit with the biggest shared-continuity universe in the business, _auteurs_
have embraced serialization with high-quality TV series, and it's only a
matter of time before someone starts purposefully making non-genre continuity-
linked trilogies.

~~~
andybak
I'd say it's HBC and it's ilk that shifted things. Long story arc TV shows
with the same artistic ambitions and standards as movies. It's debatable where
it began. First I remember is Oz but I've read people claim it goes as far
back as Hill St. Blues.

In the UK we had a series called GBH that blew me away as a young person. I
keep meaning to rewatch it to see if it's as good as I remember.

~~~
pessimizer
> In the UK we had a series called GBH that blew me away as a young person. I
> keep meaning to rewatch it to see if it's as good as I remember.

I've watched it recently, and it's super-fun, but not thoughtful or deep. It's
just a LibDem/Tory slander against Militant starring a cartoon character
sexually impotent lefty pol who pours campaign fund champagne over hookers
while plotting petty revenge against his childhood enemies, slapping children
and wetting the bed.

~~~
moomin
Watched it again a couple of years ago. It's not perfect (some episodes could
be chopped without you noticing), but a Tory smear it ain't. Alan Bleasdale
was "True Labour" (way to the left of The Third Way), he just had no time for
the Derek Hattons of the world and believed Militant was an unwitting tool of
the establishment (something he made explicit in the plot). Complicated by the
fact he made Murray way more interesting than Hatton, ofc.

Nelson is Bleasdale's hero: long standing Labour member. Wants to teach kids,
but would never cross a picket line. Doesn't use the personal stuff the
establishment have dug up to discredit Murray. &c

Incidentally, I lived near Hatton back in the day. He had done extremely well
financially out of his time at the council.

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interfixus
The random synchronicity of life! I am halfway through this movie, having
watched the first two hours last night, and planning to view the rest of it
today. First time ever, and didn't really know much of it. When up pops this
posting on HN.

I assume I shall have to watch the whole thing before it meshes into
coherence, so at this point no ruminations on the actual quality of the thing.

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madengr
The same was done to the 1984 Dune movie. It was originally 4 hours, then cut
down to 2.

~~~
lobster_johnson
No. There are lots of stories about various very long versions of Dune. The
most common story that is Lynch had a 6-hour version and that the studio
forced him down to 2. It's a myth. The theatrical cut is the only cut Lynch
did.

~~~
duskwuff
The "6-hour version of _Dune_ " is probably confusing the Lynch treatment with
Jodorowsky's attempt at a _Dune_ film -- which was never filmed (the script
wasn't even finished!), but whose production was documented in the 2013
_Jodorowsky 's Dune_:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky's_Dune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodorowsky's_Dune)

It may also be confusing Lynch's film with the 2000 Sci-Fi miniseries _Frank
Herbert 's Dune_, which totalled roughly 5 hours across three episodes.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Possibly, but the rumours of a 6-hour and even longer cuts go back _years_. I
remember discussing this way back in the late 1990s. It's a very persistent
rumour.

~~~
duskwuff
The attempted Jodorowsky treatment was in the 1970s. The documentary film was
more recent, but people certainly would have heard about it at the time.

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Frogolocalypse
? I'm not sure how this fits together. There is a four or so hour extended
version of the movie which I love. Is this saying that there is a new version
as well?

~~~
exodust
The article is from 2015. There is not a new version.

The most recent version of the film is 250 minutes long and was released in
2014 containing the extra 20 minutes of restored footage.

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aaron695
All the top torrents are the 3h 49min or 4h 11min extended version.

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neves
Great, great movie. I my country it is available in Netflix.

